Memories
by boredsvunut
Summary: What happens when it's personal?
1. 1

(Disclaimer: I do not own Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The show, the characters, etc., all belong to that creative genius, Dick Wolf and that big corporation called NBC. Don't sue me!)

(Summary: What happens when it's personal?)

(A/n: Just to throw this out, so I don't get a million angry reviews - this is a little bit on the AU - just slightly. But it's mostly canon. I think.)

_8351 Jewel Street, Brooklyn._

_8:15 A.M.._

I slam the car door shut behind me, looking up at the house in Brooklyn where I'd been called to. Old and abandoned, it looks pretty damn scary. Like something out of a horror movie. The type of house kids sneak into for a thrill on some dark night.

I walk through a bunch of uniforms, around a squad car and under a barrier of yellow crime scene tape, before I get to the front door. I open the door and pull the flashlight from my belt, to see by. "Someone? What do we got?"

My partner comes down the stairs, and each one creaks. "I think this is one of the first times we've had a crime scene in the dark, huh?"

"Yeah. So _why _are we here?"

"Patrol had gotten reports from the neighbors of kids using this place as a party pad. This morning, they stopped in to check it out and found our vic in an upstairs bedroom."

I follow Elliot back up the stairs, ignoring something in my mutinous brain that's demanding I give up this madness and go back to sleep for the next few hours. We worked late three nights in a row this week. I had just started to fall asleep this morning, when Cragen woke me, told me we'd caught this case.

Instead of Warner, there's an assistant ME kneeling by the naked body of a woman in the said upstairs bedroom. "White female, mid or late thirties - strangulation would be my unofficial guess." He points to the heavy, dark, finger-shaped bruising on her throat. How many times have we seen that before?

"Time of death?" I rub my eyes, trying not to yawn.

"Within the last ten to twelve hours. And it's my guess that this is a dump job. There are marks on her side - she died, lying on her side, somewhere, but she was put here, on her back."

"Rape kit?" Elliot questions, as I look around the bedroom. It's icy cold and bare of all furniture, but something seems familiar. I don't hear the ME's answer, as I leave the room and go back down the stairs, slowly, convinced that I've been in this house before. The address is fixed in my brain - that seems familiar, too. I step out the front door and look around. The houses on the street look somewhat familiar. There are half-images, half-remembered things flashing through my brain too fast for me to focus on any particular one. I know I've been here.

"Liv? What the hell?" My partner's followed me outside.

"I've been here." I murmur. "I know this house." Something tells me I have to look at the backyard. I step around to the back of the old place. The same tall, mature trees have grown some, but I can remember climbing one, as a child and my grandmother yelling at me from the kitchen window. Oh, crap.

I go back inside, through the front door, and look at the banister on the stairs, remembering sliding down it, as my grandmother watched me in horror and my grandfather laughed. This was my grandparents' house.

"Elliot?"

He's right there, giving me a 'what-the-hell' look. "What?"

"Call the boss. This one's personal."

"Huh?"

"This was my grandparents' house. That upstairs room, where our vic is?"

"Yeah."

"I was conceived in that room."

He stares at me, almost not believing me. But then he must see the serious look on my face. "You're kidding."

"No."

Captain Donald Cragen looks at me, when he arrives. "So you just figured it out now that this was your grandparents' house?"

I sigh. "I haven't been here since - it had to be the '70's. My grandfather was unionized - a plant worker - and after the last of their kids left home, they sold this place and used his housing benefits to get an apartment. I was a kid, the last time I was here."

"Walk me through the house - the way it used to be."

I sigh and point to the first room past the stairs, down the hall, on the left. "That was the living room. Next to that, there's the kitchen and the dining room. Back door's in the kitchen." I show them the rooms, then lead my partner and boss back up the stairs. "This banister - I remember getting yelled at for sliding down this." I blink, at the upstairs of the house, trying to remember. "Okay - that's the bathroom." I indicate the room to the left of the stairs. "Master bedroom's here"- I point down, to the very end of the hall. "My mother had a brother and a sister - this was her sister, Sandy's room." I nod to one of the smaller bedrooms to the right of the bathroom.

"Her little brother Charlie - this was his room." I try the doorknob of the room opposite our crime scene. "And this was my mother's room." I nod to the crime scene.

"Did they ever switch rooms, move the kids around?" Cragen raises an eyebrow.

I shake my head. "I remember this, because Sandy was still at home, when I was little - she didn't move out, till she got married."

"Any ID on our vic?"

"No." I shake my head. "Now, this could be crazy coincidence, or it could be planned. What I don't get - why go through all the trouble of dragging a body up those stairs, if you just want to dump it somewhere?"

"Good point." Elliot gently steadies me, with a hand on my shoulder. "Your mother's brother and sister - where are they?"

"Charlie's gone. Sandy's out in Connecticut. I don't have her number - I'll give her a call when we get back to the house."


	2. 2

_SVU squadroom._

_9:30 A.M._

I hang up, disgusted with myself, after trying my aunt's line in Connecticut for the fifth time. Sandy's always up early, when she's home. Elliot looks at me, concerned. "Hangover?" He questions, and I make a face.

"No. I just remembered. It's the middle of January. Sandy's somewhere in Miami. My uncle's a retired doctor. The benefits of marrying someone with money, eh?"

"Got any other relatives you can call?" Cragen raises an eyebrow.

"Sandy's kid, Rachel - last I heard, she was somewhere in Texas, but that was four or five years ago - I don't know where she'd be, now. Charlie's wife, Linda - she passed away last year. I have a couple of cousins, but they wouldn't remember or know anything about that house. I barely do. Any luck getting an ID for our vic?"

"Her prints were on file. She clerked for the city, in '90 and '91 - name's Amanda Morris."

I bite my lip, looking at the photo pulled from the woman's record at the DMV. "Damn it." I groan, softly. She's older than she was, when I knew her, her hair longer, but I know her.

"You know her?" Elliot questions.

"My sister." I mutter, running fingers through my hair.

"Okay. Did I miss something here?" He stops in front of me, frowning.

"Not my biological-by-blood-on-the-books-same-mother-different-father sister." I shake my head at him, impatiently. "My sorority sister, from twenty years ago."

"You don't seem like the sorority house type. Really, Olivia. Doesn't that lifestyle necessitate a liking for loud, crazy parties?"

I roll my eyes in John Munch's direction and respond like I always do. "_Shut up_, Munch. That's the guys' side of things. Things were a hell of a lot different, twenty years ago. And I was broke - the dorms at Siena were shit and I couldn't afford to live off-campus, because Mom wasn't feeding me money. Besides, it sounded like fun. Being an only child makes for a real lonely life, so these girls were as close as I was going to get to sisters."

"You know anything about her?" Cragen questions.

"She was pre-law, when I was in school. Taking courses at Siena, then Daddy was gonna shell out for law school at some top-rated place - Columbia or Princeton. I was only there for about a year and a half, so I don't know what she did after I took off back to the city and wrote my exams. I'm not sure if she stood for the Bar or not. Her father - something's got me convinced he was a cop. He wasn't NYPD though, and he wasn't local - State Trooper."

"Call the Bar Association. Run her name. Think she worked for the DA, Liv?" Cragen rubs a hand over his bald head.

"I don't know. I got the feeling that she wasn't so sure about law school, but that was twenty years ago." I open my desk drawer, to find a phone book.

A half-hour and some runaround later, I have my answer from the Bar. "Yeah. She did stand for the Bar. Fifteen years as an ADA in Queens. I called her office and they're faxing me her personnel file."

Cragen raises an eyebrow. "This is how many murdered ADA's we've caught? Two?"

"Three." I reply, remembering the friend of mine that Richard White got to, and then Jeff York, my ex, who was secretly gay. My mind wanders to Alex, forced into Witness Protection, but I know that's not what Cragen means. I get up to fill my coffee mug, and check the fax machine. Sipping from the mug in my hand, I watch the information come through the machine.

The boss himself made this pot of coffee. I can tell. He's had enough practice to know how to make a decent pot. If Munch had made it, I wouldn't be drinking it. I think he's creating his own little conspiracy, to kill us with something he's putting into the coffee when he makes it.

Elliot takes the sheaf of papers from me, when I go back to my desk. "Captain and I'll get the family." He murmurs. "You got what, two hours' sleep?"

"An hour, maybe an hour and a half." I shrug.

"Go." He nods to the stairs to the crib. "You'll fall asleep here at the desk and when you wake up, you'll be pissed because you've got a cramp in your neck and back."

"Aww, and I was gonna ask to borrow the car. Guess that's out, huh?" We've traded this joke so many times I've lost count. "You gonna come upstairs and tuck me in?"

Elliot glares at me, even though I see the smile in his blue eyes. He picks up a pen and throws it in my general direction. It misses my shoulder by an inch. "I guess you didn't play football in high school?" I drop it in on his desk, under his nose. He promptly grabs the thing and pops the end of it, into his mouth.

"Do you know how many pens you've destroyed, doing that?" I demand. That's one of a short list of things about him that piss me off. His habit of chewing on things - pens, straws, etc. And when he does chew on pens, they're typically ones he's stolen off _my _desk. He shrugs and nods, again, in the direction of the crib.

I go upstairs to the room filled with steel bunks with decent mattresses and blankets. It's a place to sleep. I shut the door behind me and chose the bottom bunk furthest from the door, shedding my shoes, socks, belt, watch and necklace before I turn back the covers and settle in there.

"Liv." There's a hand on my back, through the warmth of the old, yet clean wool blanket and cotton sheets. I groan, in protest, but roll over, face to face with my partner. "Wha'?"

"Time to get up." Elliot remarks, as I brush my hair off my forehead. "You've been asleep for two hours."

"I don't like you, Stabler." I glare at him, groping for my shoes. He only laughs. "Amanda's father came down - you were right. State Trooper. Mother apparently died when she was seven. Munch and Fin are going through her cases, looking for anything that looks suspicious, but right now, I guess it seems pretty neutral."

"Yeah. So _what _was the point of waking me?"

"Someone downstairs wants to see you."

I put myself back together, stop and check my hair with my hands, making sure it's not sticking up in seven thousand different directions and make my way down the stairs. Standing by my desk is an older woman in her mid-fifties, her greying hair cut short in a cut that really suits her face. She's shorter than I am, by a few inches, dressed in jeans and a blouse. Blue eyes meet mine and I smile. My mother's sister, Sandy. "What happened to Miami?" I question, as she pulls me into a hug. With our height difference - I'm five foot eight, and Sandy's no more than five foot four - this has always felt awkward.

She shakes her head. "Barry just had to come back early. I told him, it's about twenty degrees in Connecticut, probably with about a foot of snow down. And guess what? I was right. I left him at home to shovel us out. Not much snow down around here, though."

"It rained." I shrug. "You didn't come all the way from Connecticut to talk about the weather."

"Honey, I'm the sister and the aunt of a cop, okay? New York area code - that's you. And when you call me five times in one half-hour . . . "

"How did you know it was me? I didn't call from home."

"I told you, the area code. When Rachel calls, I get the area code for Houston - caller ID. You're the only person I know that still lives in the city. So what's going on?"

I sigh. "Sandy, we found a body, this morning, in the old house in Brooklyn."

She gasps, softly. "My God."

"Listen. Can you remember anything about who bought the house after it was sold?"

Sandy shakes her head. "They sold that old place in '75, because I'd just gotten married, Charlie and Linda had gotten married in '72 and Serena and you were out of the house - there was no point in those two being there alone, when Daddy had union benefits for housing. I think it was Charlie's genius idea to get them to sell. It was a family - you can't live alone in a place like that. I think they were new to the city - from someplace upstate. Mom - she hated to let go of it, though, but I think Dad was more than happy. I take it there's no one in it, now?"

I shake my head. "Abandoned."

"You can't remember it, but that old place was something nice, when Mom was there, taking care of it. Daddy and a few of his friends did all the work to that place themselves - built it."

"I remember getting yelled at for sliding down the banister."

Sandy smiles, slightly. "And climbing the tree in the backyard."

"Yeah. That too."

My aunt sighs. "I can't tell you too much about who bought the house, after Mom and Daddy moved out - I was busy trying to get a job and find a place for us to live. I was twenty-five, with a husband and a nursing degree, but no home and no job. Barry wasn't gonna have us living with anyone. No - I was gonna say you might want to go back and talk to some of the old neighbors, but none of them are there, now."

"Sandy." I look at her, straight in the eye. She's on edge about something. "What's up?"

She sighs. "Talking about the old house has got me thinkin' about something. I don't know if I want to tell you."

"What?"

Sandy rubs her forehead, her blue eyes sad. "Honey, you gotta understand, this was a different time, back then."

"What happened?"

"When you were first born, Mom and Daddy got Serena a little place of her own, 'cause that was what she wanted. She had the kid, but not the husband. She got herself a job, working tables, and she did all right for a while, for the first year or so, then Charlie started noticing stuff. She'd disappear, leave you with a neighbor, never show up for work - I think, one night, Daddy and a bunch of the boys came across her in a bar. She hadn't been home in a week. She was out of a job and about to lose the apartment, so Mom called Children's Services, I guess you'd call it now. She and Daddy filed for custody, until your mother got back on her feet. That was '67, and they kept you till '71 - you would have been about five, when your mother finally got her act together."

"But not for long." I comment, under my breath. "Why the hell didn't someone tell me this?"

"I was seventeen - I had no clue what in the hell was going on. All I know was that my big sister had screwed up and then her kid was in the house. Charlie always was quiet about it - he didn't think you needed to know."

"This is a joke. Charlie would have told me something like this." I protest. "Mom would have."

"Nope. Charlie knew you too well. You had enough going on around you, so why add more to it? And to be honest with you, sweetheart, I don't think your mother even remembered that. I'm sorry I can't help you."

"Someone could have told me this, Sandy."

She shakes her head, slowly. "I thought you knew. For years, I assumed Charlie or Serena, or someone had told you. And I just didn't want to call out of the blue and start talking. You know, Brian, being the family genius"-

"I'll agree to disagree with you on that one, Sandy." I murmur. She's referring to my uncle Charlie's son, Brian, who works for the Feds in Boston. She thinks he's brilliant; I think he's an annoying pain in the ass moron.

"Okay. Never mind. But it was Brian's idea to throw a little family reunion, down on the Jersey shore, in the summer - you know, it'd be good for you to show up."

I shake my head. "This is just another one of someone's attempts to show me how much I stick out."

"What do you mean?"

"Sandy, seriously. Look at me. Next to my mother, most normal people wouldn't even pin me as being her kid. I get stuck in a group of short, blue or gray-eyed blondes and redheads. When I was a kid, I really stuck out."

My aunt raises an eyebrow. "How? You were like the rest of 'em."

"Like hell. I couldn't walk, because I was too busy tripping over my own feet. I was five foot six when I was seventeen - Rachel's five foot five in her thirties. I'm the only brunette in all the photos. Anyone that I'm related to by blood looks nothing like me."

Sandy shakes her head. "You've never looked really closely at your grandmother, have you? You're tall, with a completely different body type than what she had, but you both have that same jaw and cheekbones - same nose, too. If Mom had been taller, every modeling agency in the city would have been after her in the '40's. And looks aren't everything. In the pictures, you stand out, but you're more like your mother than you'll ever figure out. You and Serena - both stubborn as damned mules, the two of you. Before she had you, she and Daddy used to fight over the Women's Lib movement. She was all for it, women getting out of the house, having equality. When she was younger, she reminded me a lot of you."

"You mean before some sociopath got her pregnant."

Sandy sighs. "You can't get over that, can you? Your looks might come from his side, but you're not a complete outcast. I see Charlie in you, once in a while. And not just the job - the both of you were always quiet, always thinking. I used to sit there and try to figure out what he was thinking - that was impossible, the same way it is with you."

I rub my eyes, wanting to go back to the case and forget this. I don't want to hear about I'm like the rest of my family. I'm not, no matter what Sandy says. I'm not. But I've got one question for her that I've never thought to ask. "Tell me something. Do you know why the hell Mom kept me?"

She shakes her head, blue eyes saddened again. "Sweetheart, I was a kid when you were born. But like I said, your mother was stubborn. That's the one thing he never took from her. I don't know why she kept you. They offered her to place you somewhere, an orphanage, till they found you parents - it was still pretty taboo for a young woman to raise a kid on her own, without a husband, unless she was widowed. But she made her choice."

"If it hadn't been for my sociopath of a father, I wouldn't be here." I murmur, shaking my head. "Did she ever give a reason why she wanted to keep me?"

"I know she didn't want a kid. What nineteen-year-old in 1966 wanted a baby, when she didn't know who the father was or where he was? I know she and my parents talked about what she was going to do, when you were born. I think she got attached to you, when she was pregnant - it makes sense. And then she couldn't let you go."

Cragen leans out of his office. "We got another one. Dump job at a cemetery."

I shudder, mentally, downing the last of the cold coffee in my cup and touching my aunt's arm. "Thanks, Sandy. I gotta go."


	3. 3

1West Manhattan Cemetery.

6091 West 82nd Street.

1:30 P.M..

"Who the _hell _would dump a body in a _cemetery_?" I demand, huddled in the black leather of my coat and gloves, trying not to freeze to death, even though the weather is stubbornly trying to ensure I do just that. It's windy, today. The gusts of wind that push against my front and whip over my face and through my hair are icy and biting. Plus, it looks like it's going to snow. I might as well just go live in Canada - it's the same type of crappy weather, here on the East Coast, in winter.

"Doesn't seem like he's trying to hide the body - it's more like he's trying to tell us something. Have to see where he dumped the body." Elliot muses. "Cold, huh?"

"No shit." I respond, glaring at him.

"Ouch. _Someone's _PMS-ing today."

"Shut up, okay?"

"You don't like winter?"

"Elliot, I'm starting to think you didn't hear me - _shut up_."

"What's the problem with winter?"

I glare at him, again. "You work foot patrol when there's ten inches of snow down and it's about ten degrees and then you tell me how much _you _like winter."

"Who'd you piss off in the brass?" My partner questions.

"No one. We were short a couple of guys - boss made me go out. I could have killed him by the end of the day."

We walk down to the section of the cemetery where the body was found, by the caretaker. I know my mother and her younger brother are buried here, but it could be just coincidence. There's no crime scene tape up, because there's nothing to attach it to. A couple of uniforms are beginning to set up wooden police lines, as we step over. For some reason, I'm reminded of another winter day, in this place.

One of the uniforms directs me to the caretaker who found the body. The man's evidently shaken up, so I ask questions, take a few notes and go over them, trying to think if there's anything else I need to ask him. "Liv!" Elliot catches my attention. When I first started talking to the man, he was talking to one of the guys from CSU. Now he's crouched down, an inch or two off the ground. "C'mere."

I nod to the man, tuck notebook and pen back in my coat pocket and walk over. "What?"

My partner looks up at me, his blue eyes sick. I look down, seeing the young woman lying there - maybe mid-twenties, white, with long dark hair. She's naked and strangled, her body lying over someone's grave. I happen to look at the headstone and swallow hard, my heart beating overtime against my ribs. It's a family one. My family's. I close my eyes, willing myself not to see the name carved into the top. _Could be a coincidence. People have the same last names and they're not related. _I try to rationalize it and kneel down, to look at the engravings on the lower part of the stone. The Police Department logo's carved there, just above the first name. _Charles J. - May 12, 1949 - June 11, 1987. _Shit. That's my uncle Charlie, the cop, my mother's younger brother. The newest carving there catches my eye. _Linda A. - April 21, 1951 - August 1, 2004. _I swallow, trying to pull myself together. Linda was younger than Charlie - she used to tease him about it. I push aside the flowers someone laid there, recently and bite my lip. There's no doubting that this is the grave of my relatives, this time. _Serena M. - January 25, 1946 - February 16, 2001._

I get up, shoving my hands back into my pockets, going back to the car. I can't do this. Someone's got it out for me. Dumping a body in my grandparents' old house, then dumping a body on the grave of three of my relatives? Someone's definitely got it out for me.

I'm sitting there, huddled in the car, the engine running for heat, when there's a knock on the window. Elliot. Typical. Why doesn't he just go the hell away? I realize that he's got no way to get in the car - I locked the doors just for that reason. I shake my head and he scowls at me, reaching into a pocket and coming out with his cell. A silent threat for a call to the boss. What the hell can Cragen do? I reach over and put down the window. No way in hell am I going to let him sit here with me. Not now.

"Can you let me in the car? It's freezing."

"Go away."

"Olivia, it's too damned cold for this. Unlock the door."

"Are you _ever _gonna listen to me? I said, _go away_."

We lock eyes, both of us stubborn, neither one giving in. "Do I have to call the boss or will you stop acting like a ten-year-old?" Elliot demands.

I roll my eyes and unlock the door. He can sit here - I like him enough that I don't want him to freeze - but he'll have to really fight with me to get me to talk. "Do you think it's coincidence?" My partner asks me, as I turn my head and hand him the keys to the car.

"A body dumped in the room where my mother was raped, almost thirty years ago, and a body dumped on the grave where my uncle, my aunt and my mother are buried - it's not a coincidence." I stare out the window.

"You never told me your uncle was a cop." Elliot muses, quietly. "How'd he die? He wasn't even forty, when he died."

"He died in the line. It was the '80's - everything was crazy. He tried to convince me to go back to school, stay off the streets till things had calmed down, when we had some control over things - we had AIDS, and we had cocaine and all that other shit on the streets."

"Did he have a family?"

I nod. "Un-hm. Linda's buried with him - she just passed away last summer, and when he was killed, his son, my cousin Brian was seven."

"Is the kid on the job?"

"Brian? Two years criminal justice at Columbia, on Charlie's pension and the Feds grabbed him. He pushes paper for the FBI in Boston."

"That wasn't a family plot. Where are your grandparents buried?"

" Over in Brooklyn. After Charlie died, we buried him here and planned to bury Linda beside him - a lot of people do that, to make things easier for their families. And Mom and Charlie were close - I thought that might have been what she wanted. Let's go back to the house."

Elliot glances at me, once, then starts the engine.

"Did you piss someone off recently?" Cragen demands, running a hand over his bald head, pacing a slow circle in front of what I've come to call the evidence board. There's no other name for the damned thing.

"I tend to piss a lot of people off, Captain." I rub my eyes and see him glare at me. "You know what I mean."

"I haven't pissed anyone off who would be out of a prison cell committing two murders, no."

"This is too much for coincidence." Munch jumps in.

"It's personal." I put a hand over my eyes. "Why am I always the target of these wackos? Why the hell can't they stalk someone else, for once?" I realize I sound like a kid and wince. It does get frustrating after a while and this time, it's more personal than it's ever been.

Dr. George Huang, our forensic psychiatrist, the shrink that works our cases joins the circle. "You're a woman. Most of your perps target women. Of course they're going to single you out." He puts in, softly.

I shake my head. "Gee, thanks, Doc. That's reassuring. When any one of the psychopaths I put away gets parole, I'm screwed."

"Any chance the second body could be just a coincidence?" Elliot questions, interrupting me.

"He didn't try to hide her. He's trying to make a point of something."

"Trust me, he already did." I shake my head. "But what kind of sick freak dumps a body in a cemetery?"

Huang shakes his head. "He's trying to get a point across. But I can't see what it is."

I listen, absentmindedly, as Elliot takes a phone call. "That was Warner. She's got something she wants us to see - now."

The ME, Melinda Warner shakes her head, as we look down at the body of our new victim on the steel table. "You got something, Doc?"

"When I brought her onto the table, to look her over for any kind of identifying mark, I noticed something on her back. It looks like a new tattoo." She rolls the woman's body to one side and I lean in to look at her bare back. I see the black ink on her right shoulder blade, aware of the fact that I have an NYPD tattoo on that exact same spot. I had it done when I graduated from the Academy. My uncle Charlie almost killed me, when I put on a bathing suit about a week after, down on the Jersey shore and he saw it.

But the ink on her shoulder is fresh. It looks like it was still bleeding when she was killed. Two sets of numbers. _9619_ - for some reason that seems familiar, but I can't remember why. The four numbers beneath that are definitely familiar, forced into my brain at the Academy, when I got my badge - _4314_. My badge number.

I quietly point this out to my partner, who sighs. "Anything else?"

"Well, these were done pre-mortem - see the dried blood? She was still bleeding from the tattoos when she was killed. I took the rape kits from her and the victim from earlier this morning - no fluids, but heavy genital trauma and bruising. I got skin from under their nails - it's being run now. Tox screens are both negative. Your first victim was dead between ten and twelve hours before she was found. The second - no more than four to six hours."

"This guy's good." I murmur. "Cause of death?" I have to ask, even though it's obvious.

"Strangulation. I might have more, when I open her up."

"Thanks, Doc." Elliot nods and steers me out. "Liv. You. Protective detail."

"_No_."

"Do we _have _to go through this again? I get you a detail or you come stay with me."

"I said _no." I _shake my head.

"What the hell is _wrong _with you? The guy knows your badge number, where your grandparents lived in the '70's? He murdered a woman you went to college with - he's out for something."

"And when he decides just what he's out for, I'll be ready. I can take care of myself." I tap the nine-millimeter strapped to my hip. _9619_ - I can't get that number out of my brain. It means something to me. Something flashes through my head. Going through my mother's closet, after she died, I came across a small box. Curious, I opened it, and came up with a silver NYPD badge. Shit. I don't know for sure, but one of those sets of numbers tattooed into that girl's skin might be my uncle's badge number.

Back at the precinct, I brush off my partner and kneel down, opening the bottom drawer of my desk. I grope through old papers and files, coming across a small blue box. I open the cover and swallow. There it is - silver badge, with it's owner's assigned badge number engraved on the bottom. "Damn it. El, call the lab and tell them not to bother running those numbers on that girl's skin. I found out what the first set is." I hold up Charlie's badge which, somehow, after my mother died, wound up in the bottom of my desk.

"What happened?" Cragen demands.

"Warner brought the new dead girl onto the table to look her over for any kind of tattoos, scars, birthmarks, and found this." I poke my partner, until he shows Cragen the Polaroid he took of the numbers tattooed on the girl's skin. "It's fresh." I murmur. "It was still bleeding when she was killed."

"Bottom one's your badge number - what's the first one?" The boss frowns. I silently hold up my uncle's badge. "My mother's younger brother, Charlie was on the job - killed in the line, back in '87." I decide to voice the theory that came into my head, at the morgue. "But where he placed the numbers, when he tattooed them on her - I have an NYPD tattoo in the exact same spot. Could be coincidence, but after this morning, I'm starting to doubt that." I turn around, to poke my right shoulder blade. "It's right there."

Elliot looks at me, startled. "You do _not _seem like the type for getting tattoos."

"It's not some cartoon character or anything. My mother dated this guy who had a Smurf tattooed on his arm."

"Okay. Why'd you do it?"

"Out of a burst of pride, the day after graduation and, to piss my mother off. I was the rebel child of the '80's - I did stuff to deliberately piss her off. Charlie almost killed me, when he saw it."

"I would too, if one of my girls came home with something tattooed on her shoulder." My partner looks at me.

I shake my head. "It's not that big. It could be just coincidence that it's there

or he could be trying to make a point."

"Got any bitter ex-boyfriends?" Elliot picks up a pen and begins to chew on it.

I roll my eyes. "No. El, I'm normally the one that gets dumped. _I_ should be the pissed off one."

"It's not a scorned lover." Huang puts in quietly and I jump, startled. That guy can disappear and reappear without anyone noticing. "An angry lover would have gone directly for you, Olivia. It's personal, but someone who doesn't know you well. Not on an emotional level."

"That still leaves us fishing." I murmur, leaning on my desk. "I did ten years as a beat cop - I met a lot of people. Even now, I still meet a hell of a lot of people. Seriously, Doc, do you think he's after me?"

"The first victim - you went to college with her?"

"Yeah. But that was twenty years ago." I protest. "We were in the same sorority - I maybe saw her twice since I graduated."

"He knows you're an only child. You don't have a sibling he can go after - so he went after the closest thing he could find - a woman you were in a sorority with. He's building - I don't think you're at any kind of risk right now."

"So what do we do?" Elliot glances toward Cragen.

"We go fishing."

I look up, startled.

"Go through your cases, old 61s and arrests, to see if anything looks suspicious. And we get you a protective detail." He shoves his hands in his pockets, fixing me with a hard stare, daring me to argue.

I roll my eyes. Here we go again.


	4. 4

1_Olivia Benson's apartment._

_3512 West 87th Street._

_6:15 P.M._

After arguing with Elliot and Cragen for about an hour, I'm at home, behind a locked door, with one uniform outside my building, in a radio car, one standing outside my door. Great. That's just what my neighbors need to see - a cop outside my door.

Now I've got baby-sitters. If Elliot came near me, right now, I'd probably throw something at him. Cragen - I might get pissed, but the whole protective detail was my partner's genius idea in the first place. And Don, he can kick my ass and then fire me.

I wanted to stay and work, but they wouldn't let me. I hear conversation, through my door and look up. Yay. A nosy neighbor. That's all I need - gossip going around this building. "Detective Benson?" The uni outside hammers on the door.

Does he think I'm deaf? God. I step to the door. "What?"

"Your partner's here. Can you check and confirm, ma'am?"

_At least the kid's polite_, I think to myself, leaning against the door, checking through the peephole. It _is _Elliot. Damn it. The _last _person I want to see right now. "Yeah. It's okay, Richards." I open the door and he looks at me, as if startled to hear me call him by his name.

"You're camped outside my door. I know your name." I murmur, scowling at my partner. Elliot ignores the look and pushes by me, until he's inside. "What the hell do _you _want?" I demand. "You've got me a pair of babysitters with radios - isn't that enough?"

"Liv"-

"_Don't_. Just don't."

"_Olivia_. . . . "

"_You _wouldn't want babysitters, if this was _you_."

"I don't want you getting hurt."

"Elliot, I'm a female cop. I wasn't instantly a part of the family, when I graduated. I'm an outsider. All I have is my reputation. And you and Cragen sticking babysitters on me is _not _going to help!" I finally vent the frustrations that have been under my skin, for years, ever since he stuck the Feds on me, during that Plummer thing. He just doesn't get it that I have to keep my reputation up to keep my career.

"What?"

I roll my eyes, impatiently. "It's all around the house, now, that Officer Richards and his partner got tapped to babysit. But who? _Me. Get it_? If that gets out there, that I need babysitters, that I can't handle myself, no one's going to wanna deal with me, again. Being a woman in this field is hard enough, never mind being shunned because they think you're a weakling."

"You're not."

"Your opinion isn't going to mean a _damn _thing! This was _your _freaking idea in the first place!" He's _really _starting to piss me off.

"Liv, this guy's serious. I don't want you getting hurt."

I glare at him. "Do you want me to have to quit? Because with no reputation, I'm screwed. Get that? It's like a guy who's rumored to be involved with the rat squad - you can't stay because they won't let you. They'll run you out. A female cop who doesn't have a reputation, who the boys think can't take care of herself is just as screwed as a guy who's rumored to be working for IAB."

"I'm sorry." He shrugs and looks at me. "You know I care about you."

I bite my lip. Why the hell can't I _ever _stay mad at this guy! I can get pissed off, then he makes me forget _why _I was pissed off. He wasn't thinking about me as a cop; he was worried about me as a friend. I can see it now. "I'm the one who should be sorry." I reply. "You wanna stay?" Ever since Kathy left, he's been spending some nights on my couch.

"I was going to ask you that." He reaches and grips my shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Nah. Nothing to be sorry for. I was gonna order some Chinese - you hungry?"

"Starved. You ever notice how you can never stay mad at me for more than ten minutes?"

I glare at him and roll my eyes. "Just for that, you get to pay the delivery boy when he comes to the door."

"Deal." He grins at me. "But I am sorry. I was"-

I hold up a hand. "I know. I know what you were thinking. You're forgiven. You want a beer?"

"What the hell?"

I grope into my fridge and come up with the last couple of beer bottles. I hand him one, and twist the cap off the second, after placing my order.

"You know, when I first met you, I never thought you drank beer and hung out in cop bars."

I put the bottle down and look at him. "Oh?"

"Liv, get real. I mean, you seemed too much like a lady for that."

I shake my head. "Nope. Anyone who ever told you I was a lady was lying to you. Spent the better part of my life with a halo of cigarette smoke around my head."

"Your mother wasn't a smoker, was she?"

"No. A lot of the guys she supposedly _dated _were, though. And when I got older, I spent a lot of time in the bars, waiting for her face to hit the bar. I've seen a lot of things – I'm definitely no lady. Not the type you're thinking of."

He sighs and beckons me to sit beside him. "But there's something you gotta know - it's not that I don't think you can take care of yourself - I know that. But I get the feeling that he's after you and he's serious. I just don't want him getting to you."

I grin. "I'd probably do the same thing. Now, when you first met me – what did you think of me?"

"A lot of stuff. You were gorgeous, you were smart, and you were way the hell out of Cassidy's league."

I laugh, softly. Brian. The kid had a thing for me, from day one.

"But I didn't think you'd be able to kick my ass." Elliot grins. "So am I forgiven this time?"

I resist the urge to hit him. "I told you that I forgave you already. Actually, I'm kinda glad you're here. I just don't like being alone, anymore."

"And I'm just getting used to it." He sighs, as my buzzer rings.

_"Let's fall to pieces together. Why should we both fall apart? Let's fall to pieces together. Right here in each other's arms"_- 'Let's Fall To Pieces Together' – George Strait.


	5. 5

1The delivery boy has to get past the over-ambitious, ever-watchful rookie cop posted outside my door. I let Elliot pay him, without a fight, because he owes me, and bring down plates from the cupboard.

"Ya know what's scary?" I comment, swallowing a bite of egg roll.

My partner raises an eyebrow, because he's in the middle of chewing. He swallows and looks at me. "What?"

"I'm gonna be forty in about a year and a half. And I'm alone. When I see all these kids out there, wearing makeup and dressed like young hookers, I. . . . I'm sorry, but I was stuck in traffic the other morning, in front of a middle school and there was this group of girls - short skirts, or tight pants, tops that I wouldn't even define as shirts and way too much damned makeup on their faces - it makes me wonder what the hell this world's coming to. If _I'd _tried that, when I was young, my uncle _and _my grandfather would have _both _kicked my ass. Maybe I'm just old."

"That's what girls are taught, from watching TV. What's the point of going to school, if you can make a living off your body?" Elliot murmurs.

"Didn't Munch say something like that once?" I rub my eyes, trying to remember.

"Yeah. And you looked like you were gonna hit him for it."

"But seriously, when I see this world, the hell we're letting it go to, it makes me want to come back home and dig out all the old music I have, including some of my mother's old stuff on vinyl."

"You still have a working record player?" Elliot stares at me, startled.

"Un-huh. Picked it up off an old neighbor a few years back. I have all the old stuff - The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Eagles, The Beatles, Johnny Cash"-

He cuts me off. "You name off a bunch of rock 'n' roll legends, then you come out with Johnny Cash?"

"Mom loved his stuff. He was kind of bordering between country and rock, you know? Patsy Cline - I know most of the words to most of her songs, still. Tammy Wynette was another one she liked, too. Then there's the stuff she picked up in the '80's - George Strait, Randy Travis - guys in cowboy hats and jeans. Then there's a lot of my stuff - some of the rock 'n' roll from the late '70's, into the '80's - that was music. The stuff the kids listen to now - it's noise, if you ask me."

"Tell me about it." Elliot comments, dryly. "Between Kathleen and Maureen, when she was home - it made me want to lock myself in the car and find a half decent radio station."

"I'm old. Plain and simple. I mean, I can still remember where I was when John Lennon got shot by some psychopath outside a hotel."

"Where?"

"On my way home from school, on the train. I was fourteen. I mean, I can remember Reagan running for President, the HIV crisis, the Gulf War, O.J. going on trial - half of this stuff the kids wouldn't have a clue about." I shake my head. "Most of my friends are married with kids. And unless the right guy suddenly appears in the group of jerks and perverts that seem to make up most of the entire male population in this city, I'm still gonna be alone."

"You mostly date cops, don't you? Ever considered dating a civilian?" Elliot raises an eyebrow.

"Hey. I _do _date the occasional lawyer. They're not all cops. And civilian guys just do _not _get it. They don't like the job. They're either disgusted and duck out of the restaurant or bar to make a phone call and don't come back or they're _way _too interested, looking for every sick detail They ask me to quit, give up the hours - I fought tooth and nail for this job and I'm sure as hell not going to give it up for some guy. With a cop, they get why I do my job and don't ask me to quit. They don't wanna hear the details 'cause they know what we do."

"I don't know how you aren't the one with kids and a husband, Liv." Elliot shakes his head.

"Well, opening a dresser drawer and finding a .357 automatic isn't exactly something a guy wants to do when he's with his girlfriend." I lever myself up from the couch, deciding on water instead of another beer. I'll need a clear head if this guy really is after me, like my partner and boss are so convinced that he is.

"What?" Elliot looks at me, startled.

"I was dating this guy, a while back. I don't know why the hell he was in my dresser, but he was and he found my off-duty piece - .375 Magnum automatic. It was loaded and he nearly had a complete meltdown." I run my fingers through my hair.

"A Magnum. Jesus. I haven't heard tell of one of those since the Academy."

"Yeah. I know. It was my first piece. A girl with a gun - it freaks a lot of men out for some reason."

"You know how many gun permits the state must issue a year?" Elliot looks at me as I down my water and a couple of aspirin. After today, I have one hell of an evil headache. "And they can't possibly be all to men."

"Yeah. I know. But a woman who carries a gun day in and day out seems to unnerve guys a lot more than the one who stashes it in her bedside table when there's a psychopath on the loose."

"You don't scare me." He grins at me and downs his beer. "Underneath the hardass you pretend to be, there's a good girl. You're not all tough."

"You wanna _test _that theory?" I stand there, in my kitchen, silently, waiting for his response.

"Hey. I said you're a good girl under there. I _never _said I wanted to fight with you. You can kick my ass and you know it."

"You remember that the next time you piss me off." I reply, returning his grin and putting my empty glass in the sink. "Did you really come over to apologize or did you come over to watch me?"

I hear him get up, but he doesn't answer me. I twist the taps on and reach for the dish soap. I really need to do dishes. "So which one was it? Did you come over to babysit me and use the apology as an excuse?"

Before I can turn around, he's behind me, hands on my shoulders. "What do you think?"

"Knowing you, you came over here to babysit. Who sent you? Cragen?"

"No. I sent myself. And I didn't come over here to babysit. I just - I can't live in that - I can't live in that empty house, Liv."

I turn around to face him and sigh, turning off the water. Of course. Why the hell didn't _I_ think of that? I'm used to being alone, so it's nothing out of the ordinary to me, but for him, it's a shock. I've been alone since childhood, but he's one of six kids, and then he got married and had his own - he's never been alone. "Twenty years and she just walked away. I don't know how the hell she can do that. How the hell do you do that!"

"I don't know. If there was something I could do, El, you know I would. I don't know how people just walk away from marriages like that. I've watched it happen to my friends, watched them get caught up in evil divorces and I kinda have to wonder - what happened to 'till death do us part'? But what the hell do I know? I'm a confirmed bachelorette and I'll probably stay that way."

His shoulders slump and he looks at me. "I know I was one evil son of a bitch to put up with, before Scarry opened her mouth - forgive me?"

"Maybe." I laugh, softly. "I'm kidding you. Consider it payback for all the times I was a bitch to be around. You know, my couch is open, anytime. I could rent a couple of movies - it's up to you."

He smiles at me, for one of the first times in a while. "But nothing you can ever do would add up to what I was like to put up with. Believe me. I've been kicking myself over it for a month or so now."

"Well, it's not just me you owe the apology." I murmur, arms crossed across my chest.

Elliot raises an eyebrow. "Who else ever put up with all the crap you did?"

"Let me see. There's Casey"-

"That's done. But I always butt heads with her, anyway."

"She's young. She's learning." I shrug. "There's Cragen"-

"The boss and I talked about that one, the other night."

"Donnelly, but I know you're not going to apologize to her. Huang."

"What the hell did I ever do to him?"

"Before this whole divorce thing came out - that Abraham Ophion/Eugene Hoff thing - I could hear you, sitting at my desk."

"Fine. I'll corner the doc and apologize. Happy?"

I roll my eyes at him. "Very funny. I'm just telling you - I'm not the only person you were a complete son of a bitch to."

"Since you're the only one I'm talking to"- Elliot reaches out for me and before I can protest, he's pulled me close. Damn it. I haven't had a date in a few months, now, and this just isn't fair. He's teasing me, holding me like this. I have had feelings for him, since the first day I met him, but I pushed them down. He was married and we had a job to do. I never wanted to get involved with a married man. Besides, he was my partner. I doubted he even noticed me. Then I started noticing the little things. The way he worries about me, even though I try to push him away. The comments - like when I show up to the squad, just off a date, he'll stop and tell me that I look good, or when I tell him about the disaster that turned out to be my date, he'll get pissed off, especially if the guy stood me up or left me in the place.

I don't know if it's friendship or something deeper, but I've been in love with the man for years. It makes it awkward as hell, to be around him sometimes. I like seeing a guy dressed up in a suit and tie, but my partner has the girls all over him, when he shows up, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The desk sergeant in the precinct, brought his daughter to work with him one day - the girl was flirting with Elliot like mad, completely oblivious to the wedding band on his hand. I thought I was going to have to drag him off before she stopped.

He's warm, solid and close. I feel him slip a cupped hand under my chin, making me look at him. "Liv." He whispers, one hand slipping into my hair. We've never gotten this close - not when we we're both using our own identities. Undercover, yes, but not like this. Not when we're us, not some fictional people. His lips are inches from mine. I swallow, hard, so tempted. I can't.

He bends to kiss me and I sigh. I have no problem with making the first move, but I didn't want to, not when I wasn't sure what he wanted or what the hell he was doing. If I'm sure of a guy's feelings, or I have some idea, I'll make the first move, but he's always confused me. I cup the back of his head in my hands, as his tongue slips into my mouth. Fantasy, meet reality.

"_On one hand I count the reasons I could stay with you and hold you close to me all night long. So many lovers' games I'd love to play with you. On that hand there's no reason why it's wrong. But on the other hand, there's a golden band, to remind me of someone who would not understand. On one hand I could stay and be your loving man, but the reason I must go is on the other hand_."- 'On The Other Hand' - Randy Travis.

(A/n: I'm sorry about all the quotes from completely lame country songs - Randy Travis and George Strait have been my soundtracks for writing, lately.)


	6. 6

1_Olivia Benson's apartment._

_3512 West 87th Street_

_4:03 A.M.._

I wake up, with Elliot's warm lips brushing the back of my neck. It takes me a minute or two to remember why he's here and what the hell happened. Then I push his head away and roll over. "You snore." I accuse, reaching for a sheet to wrap around me

He laughs, softly and tousles my hair with a hand. "I do not."

"Yeah, you do." I feel him kiss my cheek and sigh. "El, if you wanna work things out with Kathy, this isn't"-

He cuts me off. "We had the meeting last week. It's done. I'm gonna crash at my sister's till I find a place. It's done. It's over."

I raise an eyebrow. "Why not give your sister a break and stay with me?"

"Liv, the boss would notice _that_. Me staying with my sister wouldn't draw so much attention."

"Tell him Kathy kicked you outta the house and I'm just letting you use my spare room. And that's gonna happen anyway." I tuck one arm behind my head. "But if you think you can still work it out with her, I don't want to get in the way." I'm at risk of breaking my own heart here, but I can't take a damn good father away from his kids.

"We married too young and too fast. We didn't have a choice. And then when things got rocky, we sucked it up and stuck it out, for the kids. But we just can't go on like that."

"Yeah. You can't stay together for the kids." I reach up to lay my palm against his cheek. "But it's gotta hurt."

"It does, in a way, but things had been bad for a while. It - it's done."

I decide to drop it and kiss his neck, instead, huddling against him. He's warm and solid and there. Better enjoy it while I can.

"Liv?"

"Hm?" I look up.

"What was all that talk about you being old and alone, last night? I thought you were used to being alone."

"I am." I burrow back into the mess of covers - it _is _January and I think the heat's cut out again - damn central heating - and look at him. "But it doesn't mean I have to _like _it."

He cups my cheek in his hand. "What? I thought you liked the independence."

"I do. But, El, in this line of work, any one of us could be gone tomorrow. Or stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of our lives. I don't wanna die alone. My old partner, from back when I worked the streets - one day, we're doing nothing, lying low, ducking calls, and the next he's lying in a hospital bed, with two bullets in his body - one in his hip, one in his thigh. Took a year and a half of physio to get him walking again. And even now, he's still limping. My grandfather died alone, from lung cancer, about six years after a stroke killed my grandmother. My mother died alone, in her own little hellhole world of the bottle and her bartenders/shrinks. I swear, the guy behind the bar at the Velvet Room and Tony, down at the Starlight Lounge - they got more out of her than I ever did. I don't want to continue the pattern. I'm scared of it." I finally voice my biggest fear. Dying alone, on some cold street, somewhere.

"But in this line of work"-

"I'm not afraid of dying, itself. If I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go - it's outta my hands. But I don't wanna die alone. I don't want to be alone like this. When I was younger, I could deal with it - picking up a guy for a casual one-night-stand - no big deal. But now - I can't do that. I can't live like I'm a twenty-something and watch my friends raising kids."

"You want to settle down?"

"Yeah. I do. Hell, I'm getting old and I can't stop it. My uncle had an old friend, an ex-cop, who runs a gun shop down on Second - he's stuck in a wheelchair - he's paralyzed from the waist down, from being shot in the back, twenty years ago. He told me once that he wished, once in a while that the bullet had killed him, rather than leave him like that. He was single, when he was shot, and he's just given up on finding someone. I don't wanna be alone."

Elliot makes me look at him, his hand under my chin. "You're not. Not now."

"El, I"-

He shakes his head. "You're not alone. Not anymore. I promise."

_Men_. Is he telling me he loves me? Or is he just trying to calm me down? _Damn _them for being so confusing. I'll have to work it out, later. Right now, I want to go back to sleep before the alarm goes off.


	7. 7

1The alarm clock _does _blare in my ear, a couple of hours later. I moan and throw a pillow over my ears. I don't want to get up. My apartment's icy cold and my bed's warm. I reach over and fumble blindly to find the snooze and shut the clock up, but don't move to get up. "Liv?" Elliot gently pulls the pillow off my head. "You know, we don't _have _to go in, today."

I roll my eyes at him. "Tempting, believe me, but, no. We've got two open murders, with one vic still a Jane Doe and no leads."

"So? Why get up if we don't have to? Huh? Cragen will call, if something's up."

My cell phone rings. Typical. He almost had me convinced that we really _didn't _have to go in, then reality had to come and crash the party. _Damn it._ I grope around on my bedside table, until I find the annoying device that I've considered throwing into the river more than once. I pick up. "Benson."

"I'm watching you, bitch." The voice is male and unfamiliar.

"Who the hell is this?" I demand, sitting bolt upright.

"I'm watching you." He repeats, then goes silent, the only sound on the line his breathing. I stay quiet, waiting for him to speak. In the background, I can hear traffic - engines running, horns blowing, even a police siren. He's on the street, somewhere. "Go into work - you'll find a surprise waiting for you."

"What? Who the hell"- I'm cut off, as he hangs up the phone and I finish my sentence to a dial tone.

"Liv?"

"I think our perp just called me. Sounds like from a payphone."

"Damn it!" Elliot grabs his jeans and his boxers and slips into both. "I'm gonna get Richards to radio in"-

"El, use a landline. For some reason, these guys always have scanners. Call Cragen, tell him to get the guys to check out around the house - he said there was a surprise waiting for me, at work." I catch his arm. "Actually, let me do it. I don't want the masses to show up and find out about this."

He nods and kisses my forehead. "It'd be worse for you, wouldn't it?"

"Un-huh." I grab the cordless and dial Cragen. I know he's at his desk, because he never goes home - the cot in his office proves it. He picks up on the second ring. "What?"

I brief him, explaining what happened, and he ends the call, about to send CSU our way. Elliot and I hop into a quick shower, change the bed and make it look like he slept in my spare room last night. I'm not ashamed of what we did - I just don't want the whole world knowing. That would be another dent that my reputation can't take. "Liv?" Elliot questions, as I run fingers through my wet hair.

"What?" It's cold, I'm wet and some sick psycho has my number. Yay. Isn't this a way to start the day?

"Everything's gonna be okay. I promise." He kisses the top of my head. "I'm not gonna let him hurt you."

"It doesn't _matter _about me. He's killed two women that we know of. How many more is he going to kill before we stop him? How many mothers is going to take away from their innocent kids? How many daughters is he gonna take from their parents? How many wives is he gonna take from their husbands? It's not about me."

Elliot shakes his head, as there's a knock on the door.

Two guys from TARU, the home of the computer geniuses that help us work our cases have arrived. They run a trace on my cell phone and place a wiretap on both my cell and my home phone, so if he should call me again, we'll have him. One of the guys looks at me. "Detective - do you have any idea where he was?"

"Outside. On the street - I could hear the traffic. Maybe a cell phone or a payphone. It sounded like a payphone - when someone hangs up a cell phone on you, all you hear is a _click _- you know what I mean? But when someone hangs up in a phone booth, you can hear the receiver go down."

"Okay. Your line at the precinct is tapped - we're good to go."

I nod, letting my partner show them back out. After they're gone, Elliot turns back to me. "You all right?" He reaches and brushes my hair off my forehead.

"Call me pathetic, but I need a hug." I look up at him, meeting his blue eyes. He slips both arms around me, one hand in my hair. We stay like that, for a while, with him rocking us, gently. He kisses my forehead and then releases me. I blink at him. I've never experienced this affectionate side of him. I've seen it, with Kathy and the kids, from time to time, but he's never directed it at me, and I have to admit, I like it. I like that he's seeing me as a woman, not just as a cop. I'm not just his partner, now.

I slip into my coat and toss him his. "Let's go."

We stop at a coffee shop around the block to get the caffeine boost we both need, then it's back to the traffic disaster that every movie and TV show ever set in New York City has to illustrate, including the millions of yellow taxicabs. I have to admit that the movies are pretty accurate - there are some nasty traffic jams around here. And right now, we're stuck in one.

Elliot's drumming his fingers on the wheel, absently. I'm just staring out the window. Thank God - we're moving. "You know, if you had let me drive"- I begin, only to have him roll his eyes at me. "You would have found some smart-assed shortcut, right?"

"Yeah. See, I live in this neighborhood. Pretty much grew up here. I know a bunch of side streets that would have gotten us out of this mess." He never lets me drive. It's a guy thing. Add that to the list of things about him that piss me off.

"Smartass." He grumbles, as we finally clear the backup.

"Oh, so now _I'm _the smartass?" I look at him, raising an eyebrow. "Call your sister."

"Why?"

"If you're gonna call me names, your ass isn't staying with me."

He grins and leans over from the seat, to kiss me, stopped in an intersection.

I push him away, gasping for breath. "Okay. That wasn't _fair_. But if you keep that up, maybe I will let you stay."

I see the smirk of satisfaction come across his face, as he navigates the narrow streets. There have been days when I've longed to wipe that damned smirk off his face. I also told him he should patent that look, once. He can be annoying as hell, with his attitude, when he wants to be. But something drew me to him.

When I first met him, I played the pissed-off girl, for six months. I didn't want to be around him and I didn't like him. In fact, I acted like I hated him and his attitude, but in truth, every time he touched me, my heart stopped, until I got control of myself. Pretending I hated his guts was my cover. And it worked - Cragen once pulled me in for a talk, to tell me that I didn't have to like the guy - we just had to do our jobs.

But now I can't imagine being without him. When we eat out, he just rolls his eyes at me, when I steal stuff off his plate and eat it, without asking him first. And he'll chase me, when he thinks I need him, when I'm too stubborn to admit it. When we fight, when he loses his temper, it never takes him long to apologize. I've seen him get his hands around a perp's throat, throw punches, but when he loses his temper with me, I trust him enough to know that he won't raise a hand to me.

I admitted it to myself a long time ago - I'm in love with him. But actually hearing him whisper it, before we both dropped off to sleep makes it seem more real. Knowing that he returns my feelings - it's a confusing mess, all right.

Right now, I'm not worried about what's going to happen, if this gets out - I'm in love. For real this time. When I was younger, I'd fall into anyone's open arms, a scared, crying, desperate little girl trapped in the shell of a grown woman's body. Unloved as a child, I looked for any kind of affection I could get, until I realized that I was being taken advantage of. They were just using me, exploiting my weakness. I don't think I heard a sincere 'I love you' until I was in my thirties.

A lot of people, namely shrinks, used to ask me why I was so desperate to be loved - hadn't my mother loved me? But they never got it. The bottle - the beer, the whiskey, the cheap wine and bourbon - they were her world. She couldn't stand me because I reminded her of my father. She couldn't bear to see me, as a child, because I was happy, full of life, and she was living in pain. She wasn't the loving mother I grew up watching in the movies and on TV. I had no idea what a real parent was supposed to be.

When I got my heart broken, like teenage girls do, she didn't offer me a hug and a box of tissues, then sit with me and come up with ways to trash the guy. She'd just pour herself another drink and tell me that whatever the hell had happened to me, it wasn't worth crying over. I didn't know what pain was. I couldn't _possibly _know what pain was, at my age. She did.

But while she lived in the bottle, I was suffering. She never wanted me in the first place, so she didn't feel any obligation to love me. When I left home, I was lonely and desperate. My first night on my own, I met a guy, who I swore up and down was going to be the man of my dreams - until he crawled out of bed and disappeared the next morning.

It went like that for me - guys taking advantage of me to get what they wanted - all through college, the Academy and through my first few years on the job. I was fine with it, for a while, then a friend of mine got married and she and her husband were so much in love, you could feel it. I knew what I was looking for, after that - not casual one-night-stands. I wanted someone to stand by me, no matter what, come hell or high water. Someone who would love me no matter what.

Unfortunately, I haven't found the true man of my dreams - until now. I trade a smile with Elliot. Something always drew me to the kind of stability he offers - a shrink once told me that my desire for stability probably came from an unstable childhood - I'm trying to make up for it. Yeah. My childhood was pretty damned unstable, all right. I never knew what the hell I was going to walk into, when I came home - an empty apartment, Mom on a binge, Mom passed out on the floor or Mom bent over the toilet. I never understood why she drank - it just made her miserable. If I tried to talk about it with her, she'd ignore me and pour herself another glass.

Just before I got my promotion to detective, it hit me; I was just repeating the cycle. There were so many men in and out of my mother's life, I lost track, over the years. They were just using her because she was there. That put a stop to the casual one-night-stands, that thought. I didn't want to be used. I don't even remember the number of boyfriends she had when I was a kid, but I know there were more than a few. What my father did to her left her hopeless and desperate, drowning in her own pain, as she spiraled out of control and slipped further and further away from me.

That's why I took this job. To help. Because I couldn't do anything for her, I needed to help someone else. I couldn't do anything for her, being just a child, but I wasn't the only one who was powerless, watching her slip like that. My grandparents, Sandy and Charlie all tried to help her, throw her a lifeline, get her out of that black hole, but no one could reach her.

It's always bothered me that she died, drunk, cold and alone. But it's the alone part that bothers me the most. When she was sober, my mother had a beautiful personality - she was smart and she had a sense of humor. If she'd been able to drag herself out of that hole, she might have been able to be happy.

That same thought used to scare me, at nights. I used to be terrified that I was sinking the same way she had. That I was letting this job, the victims and the kids get to me and I was letting it pull me down, suck me dry, and stop my life. I was scared that I was getting too involved. I was scared that I was never going to be happy because of this job. But, now I see things differently. A hell of a lot differently.


	8. 8

1_Outside the 16th precinct._

_7:22 A.M.._

_Dammit._ I feel for the wall of the precinct house, unsteadily. Her name was Nora. Nora Ross. We didn't graduate together - she'd jumped into the Academy at eighteen, when I went to college. But I met her on my first day and we hit it off. She got married a couple of years after to this guy named Dave. She had two daughters, in that marriage, Alison and Emma. We hung out - shot pool, knocked back a couple of beers once in a while, even worked together a couple of times. One day she came in to work, attempting to hide this giant purple bruise on her face with makeup and my boss sent me to corner her, try to figure out what was going on. Her husband had been beating the shit out of her ever since she'd had their first daughter. I cuffed that son of a bitch myself, for what he did to her. Then, she divorced him.

She was pretty and smart - a brunette like myself, a couple of inches shorter, with hazel eyes. She was a good cop, juggling her shifts and trying to raise two girls on her own.

Now she's naked, lying beside the dumpster behind the precinct, with the tell-tale bruises around her throat - he choked her, again. Her kids - oh, God. I can't let the kids see her like this. Alison's fifteen and Emma's twelve - just when they need their mother the most, this sick prick has to take her from them. Tears fill my eyes as I recall how hard it was to be a teenage girl without a mother.

Munch doesn't have anything to say or any kind of quip to make for once - he just stands there, eyes hidden behind his dark glasses. Fin, on the other hand, looks outright dangerous. Elliot looks like he'd gladly punch a wall right about now. Cragen just looks pissed. And I'm practically crying. Shit.

"You know her?" The boss finally breaks the silence, reaching to touch my shoulder.

"A friend of mine. Oh, God." I rub my hands over my face and walk off, unable to stand there and look at her body. I can't.

"Liv, it's okay." Elliot's followed me.

"This sick bastard - he's killing the people around me. I"- I turn back to him, a tear rolling down my face. He reaches for me, pulling me into a hug, again. "It's okay."

After I manage to pull myself together, I fill Cragen in on my friend's background and her family - just her mother in Jersey and the kids. After we process the crime scene - again, it's a dump job with little evidence at the site where the body was left, I throw myself into paperwork. It's the only thing I can do, right now. The phone rings and I force myself to pick it up. "Benson."

"Did you like my little surprise, Detective?" It's the same guy from this morning.

"She had two kids, you prick!" I can't hold it in. "Two girls! What the hell did I do to you to make you take their mother from them!"

He chuckles, quietly. "I always thought you were the calm one. I guess I underestimated you, Detective Benson."

"You're damn right you did. 'Cause when I find you, I'm gonna come through your door. What'd I do?"

"Who says you did anything?"

"If I didn't do anything, then why would you be calling me?"

"I like playing cat-and-mouse games. It's fun. Your friend was a mother?"

"Two girls."

"They must be growing up, now. Seeing one of them hurt would get to you, wouldn't it?"

"You son of a bitch!" I want to hang up, and end this conversation with this nutcase, but he might give us something we can use. "Okay. The first woman you killed, the one you dumped in my grandparents' old house - we know who she is. The second one you left where my relatives are buried - who is she? I just wanna know who she is, so I can give her to her family for a decent burial. Tell me who she is."

"Do you think I date my victims, Detective? I don't know anything about her."

"Yeah, you do. You must. I think you stalk 'em before you kill."

He laughs. "You're smart. You live alone?"

"No." I'm not taking the risk of telling him the truth. And it's not like I do live alone anymore, now.

"Aww, too bad. I wanted to get to know you better. Because I knew a young lady, a long time ago - you remind me a lot of her."

"We can talk. Tell me where you are." I cross my fingers under the desk. It's a half-assed tactic. He's too smart for this. But I want to try it, anyway.

"You're disappointing me, Detective. If I tell you where I am, you'll come through the door with about twenty cops. I know what's going to happen if I tell you."

"Okay. Is there anything else you want to"- I'm cut off, as the line goes dead.

"Olivia"- Cragen looks in my direction.

"That psychopath just called me, again. Cap, the guy's smart."

"Yeah. We know." It's one of TARU's techies, as he steps in the door. "He called from a payphone, both times - 86th and Lex."

"That's like a block and a half from my place." I rub my forehead. "But we don't know where he's coming from - there's a subway station on that block"-

Cragen thanks the guy and I hear him say something about how CSU's down there, dusting the phone for prints. "Our new vic - you say there's an ex-husband?"

I nod. "She married him, had two kids, but he beat the shit out of her. She came to work one day, with this massive bruise on the side of her cheek. I don't think she was trying to hide it, but I think she was too embarrassed to admit that she was letting him beat her around. He got probation, and when he was on probation, she divorced him. He took off - I think he landed in Vegas or LA and no one's heard tell of him since. Besides, when I was talking to the guy - he asked me if I liked my surprise - I think he meant that."

"How old are the kids?" Cragen questions.

"Fifteen and twelve. I wanna get a detail on them at her mother's place. He asked me what it would do to me if one of them got hurt."

"Done."

I comfort my friend's mother as best as I can. She knew the risks of her daughter dying in the line of duty, but this is different. And the kids - when they're brought in, the younger one throws herself at me, sobbing and crying. I know I can't calm her down - nothing I can say will help her, so I just let her cling to me, as her older sister clings to their grandmother - all they have left in the world.

After I show them out, making sure the kids have my number, I come back to the squad. Munch and Huang are standing there, in front of the board. "Any insights for us, Doc?" I question, joining in.

"These women are completely different - they didn't know each other, no connection in their personal lives - right?"

"Amanda was an Assistant District Attorney in Queens. Nora was a beat cop from Manhattan. No connection there. Our second vic - we still have no idea who she is." I rub my eyes. "The only connection between Nora and Amanda is that they both knew me."

"Exactly. So the common factor in there"-

"Is me." I sigh. "This is gonna be fun."

"We think we've got a lead on our Jane Doe." Cragen comes from his office, file in hand. "Missing Person's report. Filed three days ago on a Julie Carter. Twenty-four, a med student at NYU."

"Who filed it?" Elliot questions.

"Her mother. Warner's got the dental records and she's checking them now. She'll call when she's got something solid." Cragen turns to Munch and Fin. "You two go talk to the mother."

"Where's Mom at?" Fin questions, leaning on his desk.

"East Side." The boss hands the file to Munch.

"You drive." Munch instructs Fin, as they leave the room.

"Yeah. Like I'd let anything else happen - with you, you might run the damned car into a pole."

Munch scoffs, at that. "I can drive, you know."

"Yeah. When you give the aliens and the Federal conspiracies and the rest of that shit a break. Man, how the hell do you ever think about anything else?"

"I'll have you know"- Munch begins, as the door closes.

I shake my head, slowly. Sometimes my only motivation for coming to work is to watch those two bicker like an old married couple. And to bounce paper balls off the back of Munch's head to get him to shut up, when he and Fin are bickering at their desks. They argue more than they actually talk, I think.

"You know, bouncing paper off Munch's head has improved my accuracy on the firing range." I comment to Elliot, who grins at me. "It does. I used to do that before you were here. It's a way to amuse yourself on the slow days."

"Sometimes you just want them to shut the hell up and stop bickering about every little thing. But sometimes it's the only thing that keeps me here." I murmur, absently twirling a pen between my fingers. It's a bad habit I picked up from a reporter friend of mine who does that, constantly.

I turn back to the stack of unfinished or half-finished reports in front of me. Paperwork. It never ends. _Ever_. I don't like it, but it's a part of the job. I push my hair back, out of my face and set to work. At least I don't have half of what my partner does - he has this habit of leaving his paperwork to the last minute.

"Liv, do you _eat _paper or something?"

I throw my pen at him, rolling my eyes at the stupidity of that question and reach for another. "_No_."

"How the hell do you do it so damned fast?"

"Practice. When I was a rookie, I always got stuck doing the booking. And how many nights have I stayed here and covered your ass for you?"

He grins and holds up his hands. "Okay. You win."

"Detective Benson." A uni is standing at the side of my desk. "This came in for you. The sergeant asked me to bring it up."

I nod my thanks and take the brown envelope from him.

"You expecting something? A file?" Elliot questions.

"Nope." I shake my head, cracking the seal. "Feels like paperwork, though." I slip a hand inside of the envelope and pull out whatever's inside. I let it drop on my desk and bite my lip to keep from gasping.

I hear my partner shove his chair back, as he sees the look on my face. He comes around and leans over my shoulder, shaking his head. "Oh, shit."


	9. 9

1This son of a bitch has been stalking me for years. And I didn't even notice. God. I definitely feel stupid, right now. Newspaper articles, headlines, from every time I made the papers in the last three years. Pictures taken from a distance - damned telephoto lenses. He's got photos of everything - me working crime scenes, having lunch with a friend at a sidewalk café, a few good shots of me, the guys and Casey at O'Malley's last Friday night. He's got shots of my building, and my window. A couple of shots at me going to see my mother, at her grave and my grandparent's abandoned house.

It's too much. I've had stalkers, but they've never been this damned good at this. There's a couple of shots of the precinct and Elliot and I eating lunch at the diner around the block. A few more photos of me, entering or exiting the precinct house and my apartment building. Finally, I come across a picture that really catches my attention. It's my Academy photo.

I hold it up to catch my partner's and my boss' attention. "These are damned near impossible to get. My mother and Sandy and Charlie were the only people that ever got this."

"You sure you didn't give it to your boyfriend at the time?" Elliot questions.

"Will you _drop _it?" I demand. "The pissed off boyfriend doesn't _exist_. So you know, I didn't _have _a boyfriend back then. Making small-talk doesn't go that well when all you can say is: 'by day I'm being taught how to shoot a gun and by night, I wait tables. Oh, yeah, my mother's a falling down drunk. You want my number?' Believe me - that got me a lot of dates."

Cragen ignores my sarcasm and Elliot only rolls his eyes. "I thought"-

"I dated a frat boy in college. But he was long gone after I told him I was applying to the police academy. Didn't like the idea of his girl being a New York City cop - I told him to take it or leave it. He left it." I rub the back of my neck.

"You noticed anyone following you?" Cragen asks me. "Noticed anything odd?"

"No. But some of these - you can tell they were taken with a telephoto lens, but I bet you the rest of them were done by a camera phone. You can take a picture no problem and nobody knows you did it. He downloaded 'em, printed them off and we got 'em." As I speak, I keep sorting through the stack, coming across another one that catches my attention. It's a school. A public school - what the hell? "I also think he's got kids." I murmur, holding up the photo.

I take another look at it and sigh. There's a sign on the chain-link fence in the picture - _I.S. 52. _The public middle school that I attended, a long time ago. There's another picture that's similar, but the sign on the fence reads _P.S. 141 _- the grade school that I went to.

"This guy's been watching me since I was a kid or he's got a contact in the Board of Education - P.S. 141 and I.S. 52 - my grade and middle schools." I show the photos to my boss and my partner and continue sorting through the pile of photos showing me doing ordinary things - running, buying my groceries, going to the gym - normal things. I come across another shot of a school. On the brick of the outside wall, it reads: Madison High School. I hated it there. "Madison High - my old high school."

"Me and that moron Cullen, from Vice." I roll my eyes, wondering why the hell I even let that guy take me out. "We had dinner last week."

"And it didn't work out." Elliot leans back in his chair.

"I just called the guy a moron. What do you think? He was a nice guy, but not exactly my type." I rub my eyes, tiredly. "Me and you, me and Munch - how the hell does he get away with this without me noticing?"

"You're not expecting to be stalked. Richard White, he tipped you off. This guy was stalking you before he killed his first victim that had anything to do with you." My partner's got an analytical mind, when he calms down and uses it in police work.

"And that's got some dangerous signs." Cragen must have called Huang in, again. "I'd say he's killed before, before he started stalking you, Olivia. He's up to three already, in just what - two days? Most serial killers, in the beginning will make their first kill then wait weeks, or even months before they make another."

I think back to what I learned, both in the Academy and from reading a few books. The doc's got a point. "Yeah. They live on the high of the first kill, for a while, but then it wears off and they're out there trying to pick another target. Plus, he's just too damned neat. He knows what he's doing - he didn't leave us anything at the dump sites."

"Except his prints." Munch comments, walking into the room. "O'Halloran called - they dusted the whole house where we found Amanda's body - floors, doorknobs, the banister. They got a few latent prints - and a hit. Anyone care to guess who our two-time loser is this time?"

"_John_. . . . " Cragen warns, standing there, opposite to the board, hands in his pockets. "What did Mom say when you went to talk to her?"

"Her daughter went out with her boyfriend Saturday night, said she'd be home before one - never came back home. Fin's taking her down to the morgue to make a positive ID. Then he's going to go check out the boyfriend."

"Saturday." I lean back in my chair. "And she was found dead on Monday - this guy's keeping them somewhere. So who is our two-time loser, Munch?"

He puts up another photo - a mugshot, adding to the mess of photos already

up on the board. "Say hello to Kevin Logan. A couple of collars for domestics, drunk and disorderly, one DUI - nothing big. His last collar was on an assault charge in '87."

"But this doesn't seem like he'd go and out kill three women." I push back my chair and get up.

"Domestic collars - one was filed by his wife in '86 - she was pregnant and he kicked her in the stomach, then beat her around. Second one, in '92, his girlfriend called the cops when he punched her and knocked a tooth out, gave her a black eye. The wife pressed the charges - the girlfriend dropped them." Cragen shakes his head, the paperwork in hand. "He doesn't like women."

"Yeah. That's obvious." I step toward the board to look at the photo of our second vic, Julie. She was young and pretty - dark brown curls and green eyes, with a beautiful face and a build similar to mine. "I swear I know her from somewhere." I rest a hand up against the board, trying to think back. "Yeah. After my mother threw me out, when I was eighteen, I didn't go back for three years or so. When I did go back, there was a woman living across the hall, maybe three or four years older than me - Munch, how old was Mom?"

"Early forties." John shrugs.

"Yeah. When I went back to see my mother, there was a new neighbor and she had this adorable little girl - would have been about eight back then. Curls and big eyes. I guess she had just left her husband in Jersey and had come back to the city, looking for a job, with the kid. I used to babysit her."

I pause, looking at the picture of the man we think is a murderer - a serial killer, now, according to the Feds' definition. If you kill three, you're a serial killer. Something about his face stirs another memory. The long, thin nose, and the pointed chin. The cold, empty, almost hollow look in his eyes. And the shoulder-length brown hair. "When was his last arrest? '87?" I throw the question out there to anyone who can answer.

"Yep. Bar fight." Cragen responds.

"Let me see that." I take the file from the boss and look down our suspect's rap sheet for his address. The one that he had at the time. I find the line with my eyes and sigh- 3512 W. 87th. Apt. 3J. "I should have known. The guy used to live right below Mom and I. I used to hear him and the wife fighting. He used to really creep me out, too - he'd watch me, if I had to go downstairs to do my own laundry, or if I passed him on my way out the door."

"You're sure about this?" Cragen looks at me.

"Not enough to go collar the guy - but I know someone who will be." I grab the photo off the board. "I'll be back." I grab my coat, beckoning for Elliot to toss me the keys. He slips into his coat and follows me.

I roll my eyes. I can't do anything alone. Someone always has to be tailing me, preferably him.

"Where we going?" He looks at me, in the elevator.

"First of all, _you _invited yourself along. _I_ didn't. And we're going to my place." I lean against the wall.

"Liv, it's the middle of the day." He protests.

I smack him on the side of the head, lightly. "Get your mind out of the damned gutter, Stabler. We're going to talk to the doorman."

"Doorman?" He repeats, sounding startled.

"Yeah. The doorman. The guy who opens the door and hails you a cab. That guy? Jeez, El, Queens isn't out that far in the middle of nowhere. Don't tell me you've never heard tell of a doorman?"

He doesn't answer that, as we ride down to the bottom floor.

I step out onto the curb, in front my building. The doorman, a guy I only know as Harry, has been here, opening doors, hailing cabs and all the other stuff that doormen do in the run of a day, since I was a girl. When I was a kid, running out on my way to school, he'd stop me every day and pull a quarter out of my ear or some little trick like that. He's a grandfather, now - occasionally, he talks to me about the grandkids. "Miss Benson." He touches the cap on his head and reaches for the door. From the time I was five until my eighteenth birthday, he called me Olivia. But on my birthday, when I came home, it was Miss Benson. And it's been that way ever since.

"Harry. Hey, I need you to look at something for me. You've been here a long time, huh? You know this guy?" I hold up our perp's mugshot.

"Yes, ma'am. Mr. Logan. But he hasn't lived here in years. He lived right below your apartment, Miss Benson."

"Good. Harry, is Mr. Wilcox at home?" I question. I need to see the super to see if this dirtbag left a forwarding address.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay. When did Mr. Logan move out, do you remember?" I ask. I know the man has a good memory.

"He had a beautiful wife, Miss Benson. She was a nice young lady. But the missus moved out before Mr. Logan did. She moved in '87, so Mr. Logan would have left in '89."

"Okay, thanks." I let him open the door, shooing my partner inside.

My super digs through his filing cabinet, through old files, as Elliot and I stand in his office. He's a nice enough guy and when something needs to be fixed, he has someone in to do it. His son, a kid of twenty-one, is slouched in a chair, bored. As I turn around, I see him giving me a once-over, with his eyes. Urg. God. What is it with men, these days? Do they have to act like they're at the butcher's shop and we're meat? Maybe some women like it, but I don't. I also don't like a kid a little less than half my age undressing me with his eyes.

I shoot the kid a glare and he stops, turning to stare at the ceiling.

"Here we go, Olivia." The super catches my attention. "Mr. Logan's forwarding address."

We speak to the super at that address on the East Side, who sends us to one in the East Village. The super there sends us to an address in Brooklyn. I dial Cragen and tell him we think we've got this guy pinned, then buzz the super to let us in.

Elliot and I make our way upstairs, to the small apartment. "Mr. Logan! Police! Open up!" I call, as my partner pounds on the door.

"Someone's home." I whisper, quietly, pressing my ear to the door. I step back and Elliot holds up three fingers, silently mouthing: 'one. Two. Three.' He steps back and sends the door flying in with a kick. I undo the locks on my holster, pulling the gun. There's our perp and my old neighbor, sitting in a chair, calm, looking almost surprised to see us.

"What the hell's wrong with you, moron?" I demand. "We just kicked in your door for nothing." I pull him up and slap the cuffs on him, leaving him for Elliot to Mirandize, so I can do a sweep of the hellhole.

I clear the kitchen, as I hear my partner reading the guy his rights: "Kevin Logan, you are under arrest for murder. . . . "

The place is a mess; full of clutter and junk. He obviously doesn't have any women in his life. I clear the bathroom and open the bedroom door, quickly, gun in hand. There's someone on the bed. Another woman - his fourth victim - is lying there, naked, bound and gagged, with a nasty gash across her forehead and too many bruises to count. I kneel down, checking for a pulse. It's there, but it's weak. "Elliot! Get a bus on a rush!"

I hear him call it in, then hand our perp off to a couple of local uniforms that were waiting downstairs. "Liv?"

"We caught him in time." I murmur, tucking my gun back in the holster. "She's out of it, but I got a pulse. We got him in time."


	10. 10

1I hang up the phone, after a conversation with an ER nurse at St. Catherine's Hospital. "Our vic's still out of it - she's not going to be talking for a while. But we got our guy, anyway." I shrug and get up from my chair. I tilt my head to look at my partner. "Do you think he's sweating by now?"

He grins. I know he loves playing the bad cop. "Whaddya say we go check?"

"Yeah. This time, I wanna be the bad cop, though. Standing against the mirror looking bored isn't gonna work with this guy." I run my fingers through my hair.

"It works every other time. You standing there, looking bored out of your brain scares the hell out of them - you're not scared of 'em." Elliot protests.

"He's had women under his thumb for most of his life - to get him to crack, I gotta get in his face. I gotta piss him off."

"Liv, you hate playing the bad cop." He looks at me, sideways.

"You think me looking bored is an act? Sometimes it's real. Watching you throw stuff around and yell really gets dull after seeing it how many times? It doesn't change. If you get in his face, like you usually do, he's gonna draw you into a pissing match. The guy mighta creeped me out, but I never said he was stupid. If I get into his face, he's gonna get pissed enough to slip up. He's not gonna scare me into doing anything - I'm outta his control."

"You been working overtime with a shrink or something?" Elliot questions, puzzled.

I grin. "Nah. My friend's baby brother is just out of the Army and he's a psych major at Columbia. He'll call me, randomly, to ask me about a real-world example of this or that. Most of the nut jobs we get are schizophrenics off their meds, so I haven't seen that much. I try to tell him that but he just keeps calling me - I think he's looking for a date, but he's too damn scared to ask for it outright."

"Well, duh. You scare the hell out of people." He comments, but I hear the laugh in his voice.

"I only do that when I want to." I stretch and turn my head to grin at him.

I reach for the interrogation room door and step in, careful to slam it shut behind me. It's all a part of my act. A woman who's going to scare him into a corner. He jumps in that steel chair, looking at me. Then he smiles, slowly. I repress the shudder, simply staring him down.

He's cut his hair since the last time I saw him, when he was my mother's neighbor and he's older, his dark hair greying at the temples, with a few more lines on his face, but Kevin Logan still creeps me out. I cross my arms over my chest and whip a photo from the file I brought in. It's an autopsy photo of Amanda Morris.

He looks at me, questioning. "Detective, I don't"-

"She's dead. Strangled. See? And in that old, abandoned house where they found her, we found your fingerprints. Wanna explain that to me, why your fingerprints would be in a house that old?"

"I don't know."

I smile. Perps seem to think that if they repeat those three words: 'I don't know' that we'll lose interest in them. But we know it usually means they're lying. "Her name was Amanda, Kevin. Amanda Morris." I pull out the second autopsy photo, trying to keep calm for now. "She was strangled, too - her name was Julie Carter. You raped them, you strangled them and you dumped one in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. And what was this?" I swallow, as I pull out Nora's autopsy photo. "Were you taunting us? Dumping the body of a cop you killed outside the precinct that was working the cases of these women. You know what? Her name was Nora. Nora Ross. She was a mother and a cop."

"I didn't"- he begins, but I cut him off.

"You're damned lucky I didn't let my partner or my boss at you, Kevin. See, in the Department, we're kind of a family. And the guys get really angry, when a cop is killed. They get pissed even when a cop is wounded by a dirtbag like you. Ever go into an ER?"

"Yeah. A couple of times."

I lean against the wall and offer him an unnerving smile. "When there's a bunch of guys in blue, in the hall, you've got a wounded cop somewhere in that hospital. After a while, after they deal with the family, the wife and kids or the parents, they hit the streets and start looking for the guy. They don't quit, either. I know the guys that Nora worked with and they're gonna be out looking for you. Some of those guys, man - you don't wanna mess with 'em when they're pissed. One of their own being killed is really gonna piss 'em off."

"I didn't do _anything_!" He protests.

"Explain your prints in the house where a dead body was found!" I lean in, hands braced on the table, to get in his face.

He leans back in his chair. "I remember you, Detective. You've grown up and it shows"- he runs an appreciative glance over my body that makes me shudder again- "but I know you. Big eyes, long dark hair and that innocent little smile. Your mother was the drunk that lived above me. My wife pitied you and so did I, sometimes."

"I don't want your pity, dirtbag." I slam my hand down on the table, making him jump again. "You're a spineless little pervert - that's what you are. You get off choking the lives out of these women, huh!" I stride away from the table, walking to the other side of the room.

He ignores me. "I watched you grow up. It went from Barbies and ribbons, to braces and boys, didn't it? I used to watch them, hovering around the door. You had some sort of power over them, even though you were constantly tripping over your own feet. You know, you still have that power over men."

I clench my hand so hard my nails bite into my palm. I want to hit him. I shove the other hand into my pocket and tuck my hair behind my ear before I do anything stupid.

"But you also had a temper. I used to hear you and your mother fighting."

"Teenage girls fight with their mothers." I murmur. "It happens."

"You disappeared, for a few years, then you came back, out of nowhere. You were an adult and you were gorgeous."

"I went to college, Kevin. Didn't you hear my mother throw me out?" I'm not gonna let him bait me. I'm not gonna let him get to me.

"You were a beauty - you still are. But you didn't even notice me."

I roll my eyes. "I was twenty-one. I wasn't interested in my mother's thirty-something neighbor."

"But you wouldn't even acknowledge me."

"You wanna know why! Do you! The only reason I even came back was to tell my mother that her baby brother was dead. And when I told her that, she drank herself so deep into a hole that she didn't even show up for the funeral. You know when and how my uncle died, don't you?

"I don't."

I shake my head. "You dumped Julie's body on the grave where my mother, her brother, and her brother's wife are buried and you stalked me for at least three years - I think you know a lot. You tattooed my uncle's badge number and mine onto Julie's shoulder, in the same spot where I have a tattoo - how did you know about that?"

He grins, wickedly. "When you came back to see your mother, you were wearing this little tank top - I saw that tattoo. It says a lot about you. You're a strong woman."

"Why me?" I rub my eyes. "What the hell did I ever do to piss you off? Huh?"

Kevin smiles, again. That smile is really starting to bug me. It makes me want to wipe it off his face. "You. . .. I've had my eye on you for years. I used to hang out in the bars, when you went out with your friends and watch the guys practically fall out of their seats to take a look. You're gorgeous and you know it."

"Yeah? Well, guess what? You're too old for me. I've seen your DOB - it's in your yellows. '53 - you're almost fifty-two. There's thirteen years between us- I was born in '66 and I don't really like dating older guys."

"I know."

I shake my head. I don't like this. He's way too calm. When I got in his face, it should have rattled him more than it did. I look back toward the window, hoping someone's watching and catching my sign that something's up.

He pushes back the chair and gets up, walking toward me. I take a step back, looking at him. "What do you want, Kevin?"

"Who's out there?" He demands, nodding toward the mirror.

"I don't know. My boss or my partner, maybe our Assistant District Attorney - I'm not sure. They can see in, but we can't see out."

Something flickers in his eyes. I reach behind me for the cuffs, instantly. I need to get this under control and get him to sit back down. "Listen - sit down and we can keep talking." I fumble with the snap holding the handcuffs in place at the back of my belt. His hand comes up out of nowhere and hits me hard across the face.

My eyes water and my vision blurs from the blow and he takes advantage of that, forcing me back against the stone wall. Damn it. Now I'm _really _screwed. I've got my right arm trapped between my back and the wall and my left arm pinned by his hand. He uses his free hand to hit me again, across the face. I spit the blood rushing into my mouth into his face and he curses, giving me a furious look.

I try to wiggle my right arm out. If I can get it free, I can fight him off. What the hell are they _doing _out there? Why haven't they come through that damned door? Someone should have come in here the second he hit me. Unless there's no one watching. Oh, shit. He'll be able to beat the crap out of me, if that's true.

I feel his hand on my right side - looking for the gun. Thank God I left it in my desk before I came in. He curses, when he discovers my empty holster. I struggle and thrash, trying to free myself, but he's just too damned strong. I didn't understand how he could take down four women, one of them a working cop, at his age, but now I understand. He's stronger than he looks.

He looks at me and shakes his head. "You don't know how to give up, do you?"

"Damn right." I hiss back, trying to pull my right hand free. My cell is still in my pocket - I can feel it. If I can get that hand free and get him distracted, I might be able to make a call.

His free hand, the one that's not holding me works on the buttons of my shirt. "You know what I don't understand?" He comments. I glare at him.

"I don't understand why you dress like you do." He opens one button, then a second. I bite my lip. Oh, hell, _no. _This _isn't _going to happen. I'm not going to _let _it happen. Where the hell _are _they out there? I want to scream, to draw their attention, but I know that if I start screaming, it'll just get him going. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and pray someone walks by the mirror.

I feel his hand slowly begin to slip inside my shirt and I shiver. _No. _I drive my foot into his shin, as hard as I can. That distracts him for a minute or two, but he's looking at me again. The look in his eyes makes my blood run cold.

I bite my lip. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to let him beat me and break me. "Kevin." I decide to try and talk to him. It's worked before with perps. "Listen. Let me _go." I _keep my voice as calm and level as I can.

"Not now. I've had my eyes on you too long." He gives me a smile that sends the shivers through me.

"You don't wanna do this." I tell him, quietly. "Believe me, you do _not _wanna do this. Remember what I told you about what happens when a cop gets hurt? The guys that they work with get really pissed off. You don't wanna deal with my partner when he's pissed, trust me."

"Shut the hell up, bitch!" He hits me again, across my face. I should have known he seemed way too calm. He wasn't pissed off - he was just talking to me. I should have known he was wound way too tight. "You don't wanna do this." I repeat.

"Don't tell me what I do and don't want to do!" He yells at me again and I brace myself for another blow. But it doesn't come. I feel his hand wandering down my body and sink my teeth into my lip. Why the hell hasn't that door gone flying open yet? Did they really think they could leave me in here alone with this nutcase?

I'm very slowly beginning to free my right hand. Just a little more and I'll have it free from behind me. He moves his hand from my arm and before I can react, he's got it pressed against my throat. My left arm's numb and useless, by my side.

He's choked women to death with his bare hands.

That thought sends more adrenaline through my body. I shove my right hand into my pocket and while he's distracted with looking at me, I pull my phone out, flip it open and hit one of the speed dial buttons. It's Elliot's cell. I can't drop it without damaging it, so I shove it back into my pocket, still open. I shudder, as he slips a hand under my shirt, grazing my bare skin. "You know, if you gave me half a chance, Detective, I could treat you like the lady you are. But you won't. You won't even pay attention to me."

I bite my lip, reaching around with my right hand, to grab his wrist and stop him, but he's too fast. He feels my movement and yanks his hand out from under my shirt, catching my right arm and pinning it the same way he did my left. I claw at the hand on my throat with my free left hand and he pins that one again. Now I'm screwed. But he can't touch me. I yelp, when he puts more pressure on my arms and he grins. "I wondered how long it would take you to break."

I ignore him, hearing running footsteps. Here comes the cavalry - finally.

The door bangs open and he's dragged off me. I see a hand on my left arm, but I can't feel it. All I feel is the numb, tingling pins and needles. I hear Cragen's familiar gravelly rumble: ". . . . under arrest for assault on a police officer. . . ."

"Liv? You with me?" It's Elliot's hand on my arm.

"Yeah." I slump down the wall, slowly and he kneels beside me.

"Are you hurt?" He asks, concerned.

"My head's freaking killing me." I manage to answer him. "Just give me a minute or two and a couple of Aspirin and I'll be fine. Where the hell were you? He damn well beat the shit outta me."

He shakes his head. "I know. I'm sorry. I was out there for a while - you know, you make playing the bad cop look easy. Then Munch came down the hall - he had Kathy's lawyer on hold. I had to go take that and by the time I got off the phone, you'd somehow managed to call me."

"You okay?" It's Cragen, asking this time.

"Yeah. I think so."

"How the hell did that happen?"

"I could ask the same damn thing." I lean back against the wall, closing my eyes. "Someone should have been out there, watching."

"Chief of D's called." The boss sighs. "He wanted to know about our conviction rates and solve rates, our cold cases - stuff like that to pass on the Commissioner and the Deputy Chief. How'd it happen?"

"He got up and I got this feeling that something wasn't right, so I went for the cuffs. I was too slow getting them and he hit me. He pinned me, after that and I didn't have that much of a chance then . . .. " I open my eyes and describe the whole incident again. I rub my left arm, trying to bring some of the feeling back to it.

"If your hand was behind your back and he was holding you, how'd you make the call?" Don looks at me. I left out a couple of details, accidently, I think.

"I got my arm out from behind me and when he wasn't looking, when he was distracted, I grabbed the phone, hit speed dial and put it back in my pocket. He wasn't really paying attention, then, so I was able to pull it off." I study my right hand. I scraped it all to pieces on the wall, but I really don't care. It stopped him from doing to me what he did to four women that we know of.

"You're sure you're all right?" Elliot asks me, worried. I can see the concern on his face. He wants to touch me, but he doesn't want to get too close with the boss watching.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. I just need to go wash my mouth out and swallow a couple of Aspirin." I use the wall to push myself up to my feet and hear the clatter of steel on something hard. When I got up, I kicked the handcuffs I dropped. I bend to pick them up and my head throbs in protest. I hook them back on my belt and walk out of the room.

The lights in the main squadroom hurt my eyes. I feel like I have one hell of a migraine. My head's throbbing, even though he never hit me in the head - it doesn't make sense. Elliot tosses me a bottle of Aspirin from his desk and I catch it, going into the bathroom.

Inside the bathroom, I get a couple of paper towels and wipe the blood off my lower lip and chin and wash out my mouth with a mouthful or two of water. I swallow the pills, then look at myself in the mirror. My right cheek is swollen, completely - I can feel the bruise that's going to be there, already. My lower lip is swollen, too. The left side of my face isn't much better than the right. At least I don't have a black eye. There are bruises on the inside of both my forearms, but they aren't as heavy as the ones on my face.

Munch and Fin both look at me when I come from the bathroom. Munch crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. "You trying something new with your makeup, Liv?"

"No." I throw him an annoyed look and walk back to my desk. Cragen's on the phone in his office again, with the door open; I can hear him talking.

"Liv, I'm sorry I wasn't watching." Elliot comments, looking at me.

I shake my head. "It's only a few bruises, El. Three women lost their lives and a fourth was raped because of that nutcase. I think I got off pretty damn lucky. But I should have known he was wound way too tight."

"But he was calm." My partner protests.

"Yeah. Too damned calm." I reply.

When Cragen emerges from his office, I sigh. "Cap, you mind if I take the rest of the day?" I question. I just want to go home and curl up in bed or on the couch. I don't think I can last the rest of the day, after this.

"Yeah. Go ahead."

I leave my files and open my locker, taking what I need from there and grab my coat. I'm almost to the door when Elliot follows me. "Liv, if you need anything or if you start feeling crappy, call me." He remarks, walking out with me.

"Why do you think you're on my speed dial?" I question, as we step into the elevator.

He walks with me to the door and kisses my forehead. "Can I stop by, after work? Or do you wanna be alone?"

I look at him. "You can stop in, if you want to. I don't really wanna be alone." It's true. After this, I don't want to be alone.

Elliot nods, understanding. "You want me to drive you home? Promise me that if something doesn't feel right, you'll call me?"

"Promise." I link my fingers with his. "You know, I wouldn't mind a drive - I just don't think I can pull it off, with this damned splitting head of mine. You'll just have to give me a lift in the morning."

He steers me out and guides me to sit in the passenger seat. We make the drive in silence. I know he's kicking himself over letting me get beat up, even though it wasn't his fault. But I also know that I can't convince him of that. The man has a stubborn streak that is frustrating to deal with. Whatever I say to him right now, he won't hear a word of it.

He walks me upstairs and makes sure I'm comfortable, dressed in pajamas, curled up on the couch. "Liv?"

"Mm?" I wrap my hands around the cup of tea I made myself. Caffeine is something I don't need right now. I'm trying to cut back on the crap, as it is. Then maybe Munch won't be able to kill me, if I stop drinking his coffee.

"You know, I can take you to the ER, get you checked out, if you want."

"Nah. I'm okay." I run my fingers through my hair. "Trust me. I'm fine. I'll call you, if something goes wrong."

He sighs, standing in front of me. "Okay. I don't want you pulling any kind of heroics crap."

"I'll be fine. I promise." I manage to smile at him.

He nods and kisses me again, before he leaves.

I'm alone. I curl up at the edge of the couch and pull the blanket I got from my closet around me. I felt so helpless, pinned there. And I'm a cop. I'm not supposed to be helpless. But I was. I close my eyes. I can still feel his hand beneath my shirt, on my skin. And he was obviously enjoying every minute, as I struggled. If I'd been in a different place, what happened to my mother could have happened to me. I could have been another victim.

I lie back on the couch and close my eyes, pulling the blanket tight around me. I'm not going to think about what could have happened – I've taught myself not to do that – it just makes me crazy.


	11. 11

"Liv." Someone's calling my name. "Liv. _Oli-vi-a_." I moan at the sing-song tone and kick the blanket off me. Elliot's crouched down beside me, looking amused. "Hey, sleepyhead." He reaches and tousles my hair, playfully.

"Hey." I stretch and rub my eyes. "What time is it?"

"It's just after six. Cragen sent me here to check on you. How are you feeling?" He gets back up on his feet and looks at me.

"Okay." I lever myself up from the couch and kiss his cheek. "Really. I'm fine. It's just a few bruises. A little bit of makeup and you won't even be able to see this."

"You know how cute you look when you're just waking up?" He questions, tossing my blanket over the arm of the couch and sitting.

"Yeah. Sure." I comment, rolling my eyes at him.

"Seriously, Liv." He protests, grinning. "You really do look cute right now."

"I'm not _supposed _to be cute." I join him, letting his arm fall across my shoulders. I curl into his side and smile, slightly. Gone are the suit and tie I usually see him in - he's in jeans and a t-shirt. It changes him, entirely. I draw my legs up under me and lean my head against his shoulder.

We go quiet, for a while, never saying a word. It's weird. With other guys, I always felt that we had to talk about something, but with him, the silence is comfortable. I just want to enjoy being close to him. My stomach rumbles, breaking the silence and I sigh. "I don't wanna move, but I'm starving." I look up at him, to see a smile on his face.

"Yeah. I thought you'd be hungry. You missed lunch." He runs his fingers through my hair and I shift to let him up. "Anything worth eating in the fridge?"

"Yeah. Should be leftovers in there." I stay sitting, glad to let someone else come up with a meal.

After a meal of cold pizza and the last two beers from my fridge, I look at him. "Did Novak arraign him?" I ask, pushing the plate away from me.

"Un-huh. She stuck assault on a police officer on him, too. Remanded." Elliot reads the question on my face, before I can ask it. "Liv?"

"Mm?" I look up from placing the dishes in the sink. "What?"

He opens the freezer and comes up with a container of ice cream. "Something I picked up on the way over. Interested?"

I laugh, quietly. "You are a son of a bitch, you know that? Grab a couple of spoons."

I join him on the couch, take a spoon from him and dig into the tub. Mint chocolate chip. What the hell doesn't he know about me? I swallow that mouthful and get up to turn out the lights. When I sit back down on the couch, he's got a spoonful in his hand. He offers it to me, but when I reach to take it, he shakes his head.

It confuses me for a second, then I realize what he wants to do. I let him feed it to me, trying not to laugh. This seems corny, like something you'd only see in the fake, surgically-altered world of Hollywood and the movies, but I still like it, anyway. I do the same to him, in return.

We finish the whole tub of ice cream, between the two of us, as we watch TV, sitting there in the dark. When we're both exhausted, we get up from the couch and turn the lights on to check my locks, then turn the living room back to dark again.

I brush my teeth and wash my face, then let him have the bathroom. I crawl into my waiting bed and sigh. Even though I slept most of the day, I'm still tired. I leave the bedside light on for him. Anyone who tries to navigate my bedroom in the dark is bound to get bruised, if they're not familiar with it.

"Liv?" I hear him step back into the bedroom and see the light go off. "I know you're tired." I cuddle the pillow, as he joins me in bed. "Are you still awake? Huh?" He rubs his hand down my back, in a slow stroke.

"Mm-hm. But I'm gonna be asleep here in a minute." I murmur, rolling over to look at him.

Elliot chuckles, quietly. "C'mere."

He's lying on his back, I notice, settling myself in the crook of his arm, tucking my face against his neck. The quiet, steady rhythm of his breathing seems to soothe me, somehow. "I know he didn't hurt you, but are you really all right?" I can hear the concern in his voice.

"Just a little shaken up, that's all." I kiss his neck. "What's it gonna take to convince you of that?"

He kisses the top of my head. "Liv, I know you, remember? Most people would have been screaming at the top of their lungs - why weren't you?"

I knew that I'd have to explain my reasoning behind that one to someone, eventually. "I knew if I started screaming, it would really get him going. I didn't want to push him any further or make him do anything else. If he knew he had me scared, he probably would have had me on the floor before you guys came flying in."

"Jesus." He whispers, stroking my hair.

"I knew that he'd snapped. I thought that if I started screaming, it would have pissed him off. He was stronger than me, El - I didn't wanna piss him off."

"I've worked with you too damned long to not know that you can kick some serious ass." He murmurs and I can't help but grin. "Why didn't you?"

I sigh. "I couldn't. He hit me, across the face and it dazed me. By the time I was out of it, he had me pinned. I didn't get my chance to kick his ass."

"You scared me. I thought he'd really hurt you, when you fell." He looks me in the eye.

I rub my cheek against his shoulder and close my eyes. "He just dazed me. For a minute there, I didn't know what was going on. You know, like the boxer who takes one too many hits to the face?"

"It had to be pretty damned scary for you." His breath stirs my hair, when he speaks.

I sigh. How did I know he was going to go there? "Yeah. It was. I was helpless. If you guys hadn't come through the door, I know what he would have done."

"You didn't seem to be all that helpless." He murmurs.

"I was. He was too strong for me. And he's an old man. I'm a cop. I run four mornings a week, when my schedule's not outta whack and I go to the gym at least three days a week."

"Olivia, how many times have we seen that before?"

I blink at him, confused. "I don't get it."

He rolls over and props himself on his elbow, looking at me. "You're a woman."

Duh. Is he just figuring that out now? "And what does my gender have to do with anything?"

"Not saying that you couldn't kick my ass"- he holds up his hands in surrender - "but science proves it. Women don't have the same muscle mass as we do."

He's right. Damn it. "But still"-

"But nothing, Liv. You put up a fight."

"How could you tell? I don't even think I bruised him."

He chuckles, quietly and pulls me closer to him. I settle in, with his arm around me and look at him. "What's funny?"

He grins. "Munch booked him. And the whole time, he was bitching about you. You must have done _something_."

"El, a lot of perps bitch about me when they're getting booked. I'm not a perp favorite."

"He told Munch that he'd file a brutality complaint against you. So you did something."

I stare at him. "Are you _kidding _me? Brutality? Even that moron Sergeant Tucker wouldn't call that brutality, after what he did to me."

"I know." He kisses the top of my head. "So you don't think that much of Sergeant Tucker, either?"

"El, he works for the rat squad. I don't get to tangle with him as often as you do, but I don't like him. How can you like anyone who works for those sons of bitches we call IAB?"

"Uh-huh. Why do I think I should go through your files, now, to see what you've been written up for?"

I punch him, lightly. "Knock it off. I met this guy, from Anti-Crime, a few years ago - before I joined SVU. We dated for a while. One night, I wake up, alone in bed and I hear him on the phone. He was sent to check me out by Internal Affairs. He was messing with me, using a relationship to get the info his bosses wanted."

"What'd you do?"

"Me? Yelled at him for a minute or two, then threw him out. Told him next time his bosses wanted info, they should have the balls to come and ask me. Not send a spy."

He whistles. "You _do _bite. He was right."

"_Who _was right? Who told you that I bite?"

"Eckerson."

I roll my eyes. "And you actually _believed _him?"

"Liv, I had my proof before he came into the picture. One of these days, I'm going to set up a camera and make you watch yourself in the interrogation room. You're worse than me, sometimes."

I scoff at that. "Yeah, right."

"Seriously. Ask Don. Ask Casey - they watch you, sometimes."

I shake my head. "You wanna know what's in my jacket?"

"It's none of my business." He runs his fingers through my hair.

"To save you the trouble of dragging up my personnel file, I'll tell you."

"It's up to you." He shrugs.

I lay my head against his chest. "There's an insubordination write-up from '88, a couple of commendations, three justified shootings, my promotion and maybe a couple of psych evaluations - I'm not really sure."

"How'd you get promoted, anyway? You were young."

"Meritorious." I drape one leg over his.

"What? A meritorious promotion? You know how few of those One-P-P does? Does Cragen know?"

"El, he took me on. He placed me in the squad, with you. I think he read my file. He didn't just let me join the team without checking me out."

"No, but seriously - how?"

I shake my head. "I had a rookie partner with me - training her. She got herself in trouble on a rooftop with a crack dealer. He'd disarmed her and he'd cocked the hammer, when I was able to bring him down from behind. He wasn't even paying attention to what was behind him - not till I shot him."

"You spilt up, you and the kid?"

"Yeah. We weren't sure what direction he'd gone - north or south, but he was on the roofs, somewhere. She found him, got herself into crap. Boys downtown promoted me for getting her out of that alive."

"Un-huh."

"So do you have backroom conferences with all my boyfriends?" I raise an eyebrow at him and he laughs. "No."

"I don't believe you." I inform him.

"Liv - Eckerson was NYPD. One of ours."

"So it's only the cops you talk to."

"No. He was the only one you ever really brought around, remember?" Elliot yawns and grins at me.

I roll my eyes at him. "Shut up and go to sleep."


	12. 12

We got the call today. The jury's returned a verdict against Logan. We make a few frantic phone calls, to Amanda's father, Julie's mother and Nora's mother and partner and head down to the courthouse.

Nora's partner, Sara Reyes stops Elliot and I, outside the courtroom. "However this turns out," she begins, her eyes dark and hardened. She and Nora were close. "I don't blame any of you. You work one hell of a tough job - you just can't win 'em all." Sara straightens her shoulders, dressed in her blues and adjusts her black ponytail.

We walk into the courtroom and sit behind the prosecution's table, as usual. I catch Kevin's icy look, as he sits beside his attorney, Langan. Don't ask me how a piece of scum like Logan could ever afford a high-priced pain in the ass mouthpiece like Langan. Karen's there - she turns and looks at me, for a minute, as we trade nods. Another familiar head turns - it's my old boss, Lieutenant Stevenson. "Lieu." I nod.

He returns my nod. "Benson."

We let the families have the front row, of course, out of respect, but there are at least a dozen cops, all of us dressed in our formal uniforms. It makes a nice sight.

Petrovosky settles in her chair. "Will the defendant please rise?"

Kevin and his annoying lawyer both get to their feet. I keep my fingers locked in my lap, watching as the judge turns to the foreman of the jury. "Have you reached a verdict?"

"We have, Your Honor." He nods, a sheet of paper in his hand.

Elliot's hand is on my shoulder. He squeezes, lightly, then lets go. He knows this one hit home.

"On count one of the indictment, Murder in the First Degree, how do you find?"

"We find the defendant guilty."

One count down, four to go, I think, remembering what was on the indictment.

"On the second count of the indictment, Murder in the First Degree, how do you find?" Petrovosky's still talking to the jury foreman.

"We find the defendant guilty."

"On the third count of the indictment, Murder in the First Degree, how do you find?"

Again, the foreman responds: "we find the defendant guilty." Three counts of Murder One. He's eligible for the death penalty. No. He doesn't deserve to die quickly. He deserves to have to live out his life in the cold, grey surroundings of a prison.

"On the fourth count of the indictment, Rape in the First Degree, how do you find?"

Another guilty verdict. Our fourth victim, the one he didn't get to kill was just a waitress from a coffee shop on my block. I hardly knew her and he put her through hell. I think he was just using me as an excuse to attack. He probably had it in him from day one.

"On the fifth count of the indictment, Assault on a Police Officer, how do you find?"

A fifth guilty verdict. Not that it matters. With three counts of Murder One, he won't see the outside world ever again. Novak isn't ready to cut him any slack.

I accept a few hugs from people, here and there - Nora's and Amanda's mothers and the husband of the waitress that he raped. But I just want to get out of here. I'm not in the mood for a press conference today. I'm happy to let Casey have the spotlight.

Elliot and I part ways, outside. He's got to go and pick up the twins for the weekend and I have to go finish up some paperwork.

"Detective Benson."

Goddamned reporters. I've never liked them. Why do we have to be cursed with annoying, meddling reporters? Aren't there enough annoying people in this world? I turn around, looking at another annoying person. Trevor Langan.

"What do you want, bottom-feeder?" Fin once called him that and it's the truth. I don't know how a defense attorney can defend some of the people we try to put away. I don't know how they sleep at night.

Langan steps toward me, briefcase in hand. "I was going to ask you if you'd have dinner with me."

I step back. "Langan, you just lost your case. What the hell are you doing?"

"Work aside, I see you - you're"-

"Cut the crap." I shake my head. "You just want something for your client. Get lost."

"Detective"-

"It's Olivia. Real smart, asking a girl out when you can't even call her by her first name there Trevor."

"So is that a yes . . . . Olivia?"

"No. You're a scumbag and a bottom-feeding son of a bitch. Do you know what you defend?" I question, raising an eyebrow.

"Everyone deserves a defense."

"Idealism. Doesn't the modern world beat that out of most people?"

He shakes his head. "Put the work aside. Have dinner with me."

"No. Your client murdered one of my best friends, Langan. Choked her to death. And you're just looking to dig up dirt you can use for later. I know you - you have way too much fun taking me apart on the stand. And I'm seeing someone. So do me a favor? Get lost." I brush my bangs out of my face.

"I was just offering."

"Yeah. You know what? I don't know how you sleep at night and I don't want to know."

"I don't know how you sleep, either." He responds.

"I put 'em away. I don't cut 'em loose to do more damage." I turn my back and walk away.

Later on, when I'm at home, on the phone with Elliot, I tell him about my exchange with Langan. "Son of a bitch!" He growls, fiercely and I can tell he's pissed that someone made a move in on his girl. "What the hell does he think he's doing?"

"El, nobody knows about us." I point out, trying to calm him down. "It was innocent enough, really."

"So? What did you do?"

"Turned him down. He's a bottom-feeding little prick. And more than likely, he wasn't really looking for a date - he was looking for dirt to use against me, when he gets stuck cross-examining me. How are the kids?"

"Good. They're in bed, now. You wanna come out here - they'd like to see you."

I sigh. "I don't wanna butt in, El. And I'm no substitute for their mother. I don't want them to feel like you're trying to replace Kathy with me."

"Hey." He cuts me off. "We don't have to tell 'em, yet. I'll just tell 'em you were bored and came out to hang out with us for the weekend."

"I don't want to lie to them, either."

"We won't be. You'll get bored there, by yourself. Come on, Liv. And maybe you can teach Lizzie some of those tricks I saw you use when we played basketball against the bucket boys last year. You're not half bad on the court."

I sigh. A weekend with him and his twins. It's better than a weekend here alone, watching seriously lame movies on cable. "You got me. Give me a half-hour?"

"If you don't show up, I'm coming to look for you." I hear him chuckle. "So I'll see you."

"Un-huh." I end the call and throw a few things into a bag. But there's one thing Elliot hasn't figured out, but I have. Kids are not as stupid as their parents seem to believe. They're actually pretty damned smart. We'll just have to make things look as normal as possible.

I shake my head. Funny. I don't have kids and I figured that out. He's got four and he hasn't figured it out, that kids pick up on stuff really quickly. I check my locks, turn out the lights, grab my keys and leave, locking the door behind me. He's right. This will be better than hanging around in my apartment, on my own.

I don't know why his kids like me so much. Who the hell am I? Their dad's partner. Big shit. Elliot's had a bunch of partners, probably. But this will make things go a little easier, when we decide to tell them about us. I'm not some stranger trying to invade their lives and take their mother's place. They know me.

I've seen relationships after a divorce go horribly wrong, when there are kids involved. The new partner tries to force themselves into the kids' lives, taking the place of the other parent, making the kids resent them. I'm not going to let that happen. I can never take their mother's place and I know that. I need to kind of slowly work my way into things, with his kids.

But I think it's going to work out. I hope. I need him by my side. I can't love anyone else, after this. I glance up, as Harry shows me out. He stops me, with a grin. "Miss Benson - I bet you didn't know you were still growing coins in your ears."

With a flourish, he produces a quarter that he supposedly pulled from my ear. It's the same trick he did when I was a child. I laugh, quietly and make my way to the car. I glance up at the sky and silently say a prayer. Not for me, not for Elliot - for Nora's kids. Without a mother and a father that the courts can't let them go back to, those kids have got a hard struggle in front of them. I made up my mind that I'm going to be involved. I feel somehow obligated to help them.

I crank the key in the ignition and sigh. Finally, all this crap is over and I can get back to normalcy - until the next call comes in, of course.


	13. 13

I've been to my partner's house before, out in what he calls 'the ass end of Queens.' Why the hell does it suddenly feel awkward? Like I'm stepping in where I shouldn't? I kill the engine and slam the door behind me, bag in hand. Right. I know why. It isn't my place.

But if he's divorced, now, why do I feel like the other woman? God. I'm gonna give myself a headache before I even get in the door. I ring the doorbell, standing on the front doorstep. If only this piece of stone could talk. It's seen us fight and seen me shed tears. It's seen me threaten to get another partner. I shake my head, as the door opens.

"Hey. Get your ass in here - it's freezing." Elliot ushers me in and shuts the door.

I shed my coat and shoes. I definitely feel like a trespasser. He had a wife. I feel like I'm in her place. Her house. I feel like I shouldn't even be here. Not as his lover.

He reads the look on my face. "Liv, I'm sorry. I just"-

I silence him. "It's okay. Really." My eyes fall on a framed photo, on the wall. Elliot, Kathy, and the kids, on a beach. He's got a family. Nothing's going to change that. "I kinda feel like the other woman, like I shouldn't be here with you. But it's just me. You gotta give me some time to get used to things." I stretch up to kiss his head, softly.

"So you feel like an intruder?" He takes my bag from me and guides me into the kitchen.

"Yeah, a little." I take a chair around the table. "I mean - I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't be here with you. A marriage is still a sacred thing, in my mind, even though the rest of the world will disagree with me. I feel like I'm intruding on that. I don't want to ruin it, if you two have a chance at working it out."

"We don't." He kisses the top of my head. "I told you that. Liv - it's done."

I sigh. It'll take some time, but I can adjust to this. "Solitaire?" I raise an eyebrow, seeing the cards on the table.

"Yeah." He sits across from me. "You seemed like you were having some sort of an internal debate there with yourself on the doorstep - what was going on?"

I grin. "Oh, nothing. Just wondering what might happen if that doorstep of yours could talk."

He chuckles. "You have the weirdest imagination, sometimes, Olivia. So you wanna play a hand of poker?"

"Nah." I shake my head, slowly.

"Scared to lose?" He raises an eyebrow back at me.

I lean back and cross my arms over my chest. "No. I'm scared that I'm gonna take everything you got. When I was down at the 2-2, one of the guys used to have a poker game in his basement, one Saturday a month. I was the only lady they ever invited around and I wiped 'em out."

"Yeah. Right." He says, skeptical.

"Yeah. I did. Wiped 'em out every time. You call my old boss and ask him. He used to hear 'em whining about it on Monday."

"Who taught you how to play poker, little girl?" He grins at me.

"One of my mother's boyfriends, when I was fifteen. He cleaned me out for four months straight, till I beat him."

He shuffles the cards back into a deck. "Can I get you anything? Beer?"

"Mm. You read my mind. After today, I need a drink." I lounge in the chair as he goes to the fridge.

"See, I told you juries were smart." He grins at me. "I told you they were gonna nail him."

"Um-hm. But that's not the only thing. Langan."

He rolls his eyes. "I can't believe that son of a bitch had the balls to ask you out. What'd you do?"

"I told him to get lost and that I was seeing someone. And to be honest, he didn't seem all that heartbroken."

"I'd've slugged him one." Elliot hands me a bottle. It's cold, in my hands and chills my skin.

I grin up at him. "Ah, I thought about that. But I wanted to play nice with the defense attorney for Casey - sentencing starts next week."

"I still would've slugged him one." He murmurs, as I take a pull from the bottle. He twists the cap off his own beer. "C'mere."

I get up and let him lead me to the couch. "We can watch a movie or something." He comments, as I settle myself.

"Why am I suddenly reminded of a million stupid, humiliating teenage dates?" I give him a look. He laughs. "Only thing missing is the popcorn bowl, huh?"

We laugh at that and he settles beside me on the couch. "C'mere." Elliot leans back and pulls me , till I'm laying there, stretched out with my head in his lap. He runs his fingers through my hair and I sigh. "If you put me to sleep, I'm not moving." I warn him, quietly and sit up to take a drink.

He browses through the channels, like the typical guy, until he comes across some channel running the only musical I could ever stand: Grease.

"You like this one?"

"Love it." I smile. "It's the only musical I ever actually liked."

He touches my cheek. "Really?"

"Yeah." I settle in to watch the old movie with him. "You know, I was like twelve, when this was first released. I went to see it with a couple of friends."

"Makes you feel old, doesn't it?"

"Un-hm."

Halfway through the story of teenagers in the '50's, I feel myself start to doze. John Travolta - is there a female of my generation who wasn't in love with him?

"Liv." Someone's gently nudging me. "Wake up, sunshine."

I blink, looking up into warm blue eyes. "C'mon. Let's get you to bed, huh?"

I slowly lever myself up. "We're not gonna sleep in the same bed, are we?"

"Why not?" Elliot gets up off the couch.

"El, you've got kids in the house. Imagine if they come in to wake you in the morning or come into the room in the middle of the night and find Dad and Olivia in the same bed. If we're not gonna tell 'em about us just yet, that's not smart." I want to sleep in his arms and be close to him, but I'm more worried about his kids. "It's not that I don't want to be a part of this, but I don't want 'em to feel like you're trying to replace Kathy with me. It's so soon."

He brushes the hair off my forehead. "Tell you what? I'll take the couch and you"-

"Nuh-uh. Couch is mine." I reply, stubbornly. "You mind if I go get changed?"

Elliot points me in the direction of the bathroom and I go, shedding my clothes and pulling on a tank top and sweats. I brush my teeth and wash the makeup off my face, wearily. When I emerge, he's got a pillow and blanket. "I'll stay down here with you and go up to bed later." He murmurs, dressed only in his boxers and a dark t-shirt.

"And if you fall asleep and don't?" I raise an eyebrow.

"We'll tell 'em we fell asleep on the couch."

He's got an answer for everything. But I can't resist. I want to be close to him. We settle in on the couch, together, lying on our sides. After a brief tussle with the blanket and our positions, we make ourselves comfortable, with his arm draped around me and my head tucked under his chin. "'Night." I murmur, yawning.

He kisses my hair. "'Night, Liv." I feel his hand cupping my chin and his thumb gently rubbing my cheek, as I fall asleep again.

In the morning, I wake up to sunlight falling across the living room and over my body. I look up into two pairs of identical blue eyes that are staring right back at me. "Hey, guys." I sit up to greet my partner's fraternal twins. Their eyes are so much like their father's it's a little scary.

Lizzie hugs me in greeting and her brother just offers me a wave. "What's going on?" I shed the blanket and get up.

"Dad's cooking." Dickie explains. I grin. "What's your Dad like as a cook?"

"Not bad. But this morning I think he burned something."

I shake my head, smelling the scent of burned food in the air. "C'mon - I'm gonna make you guys eat burned food." I follow the kids back into the kitchen, stretching.

Elliot turns from the stove, looks at his kids, then at me. "Morning, Liv."

"Morning. You need a hand with something in here?"

He shakes his head, then looks at the twins. "What'd you two tell her?"

"Nothing. I could smell it." I reply.

"Liv, I've tasted what you call cooking"- he begins, grinning at me. He's joking with me.

"Shut up. My grandmother and my aunts taught me how to cook, okay? Insult my cooking, you're insulting them. What's on for breakfast?"

We do get a decent breakfast cooked - eggs, toast and bacon. The twins talk a mile a minute, in between bites. I don't know how they can eat and talk like this, at the same time, but they do. Lizzie and I load the dishwasher and find the guys in the living room with the newspaper. "Anything interesting?" I question, dropping onto the couch beside Elliot.

I glance over to see what they're reading. It's just two sections - comics and sports. I roll my eyes at Lizzie. She laughs.

Later, in the afternoon, we take the kids out to the park to play a game of basketball. "Boys versus girls?" I question. "Wanna show 'em what we're made of, kid?" I gently tug on Lizzie's ponytail. She grins at me and nods.

Us girls go back to the house, triumphant. We beat the boys, four to two. We agreed, out on the court, that the losers would have to cook dinner and clean up.

After everyone gets a drink and a snack, Lizzie takes me upstairs, to her room. It's the average bedroom of a preteen girl - stuffed animals and glitter. "Olivia?" She asks me, as I look through her collection of teddy bears.

"Yeah, honey?"

"Will you paint my toes for me?" She produces a bottle of pink nail polish. I grin. "Yeah. Sure. Sit down." I sit on the floor, with her on the bed above me and take her feet into my lap. When I'm done, she's happy with the result. "Mom and I used to do this, together, but now she's so busy. . . . " The tears fill those eyes.

I gently tug on her messy ponytail again. "Your Mom's busy, huh?"

"Yeah. Maureen used to do it for me, but she's got a boyfriend now."

"What about Kathleen?" I question, wondering if Elliot knows about the guy in his oldest daughter's life.

"She doesn't like it when I come near her." The little girl wipes her eyes. "I'm a little, annoying brat. That's what she says."

"No, you're not." I know a simple thing like having her toes painted isn't the only thing upsetting her. She's scared and she's confused. She's not sure what's going on between her parents. "Honey, you know, maybe you should talk to your Mom and Dad, huh?" Everything's kinda scary right now, huh?"

She nods. I smile. "So you know what? Find a time when it's just you and Mom or you and Dad and talk to them. About anything. Hey. Why don't we switch places and I'll let you paint my toes?"

She laughs, as I shed my socks and switch places with her.

Dinner's just as loud as breakfast was. I wonder how parents ever stay sane, like this. Then, we wind up watching a movie for the rest of the night, until they fall asleep, curled up at opposite ends of the couch, Lizzie with me, Dickie with Elliot.

We tuck them into bed, together and then go back downstairs. "Liv, I think they like you." Elliot comments, softly. "Lizzie does, definitely. Dickie's even warming up to you a bit."

I nod. "Are they always like that?"

"Un-huh. You should hear 'em when they fight. They fight like cats and dogs, sometimes, but if someone's picking on their twin, watch out." He glances down at my bare feet and sees the pink enamel on my nails. "Lizzie snag you into that?"

"Yeah. Girl thing." I grin. "You know, El, maybe you and Kathy should talk to these kids. They're kinda confused, right now. It's a scary thing, when Mom and Dad don't live in the same house, anymore."

He nods. "You're great with 'em, you know that? You'd make a good mother."

I shake my head. "But having kids is out of the question, for me."

"Why? Why would you do that to yourself?"

I rub my eyes. "I don't know what's gonna come flying out of left field, someday, El. I don't know what half of me is. I have no idea of what half my family medical history is like. My aunt, Sandy, was a nurse, down at St. Luke's, for years. She once saw a mother come in with her son - the kid had some sort of genetic disease that the mother was a carrier of. A mother can carry a disease like that and pass it on to her kids, without knowing it. Everything's fine, till the kid starts getting sick. I can't take the risk of putting a child through pain like that. And Sandy told me that Mom was a wreck, in the hall, because she'd given her child that disease - he was dying from something she'd given him. We see kids going through hell every day, and it hurts. I don't know what I'd do, if it was my kid in pain."

"Liv." He says, softly.

I sigh. "And I'm passing on a rapist's genes. I can't"-

He cuts me off. "Genes don't mean a thing. Trust me, Liv. If your genes meant anything as to the type of person you are, God, half of the people in the world would be screwed up. You're nothing like your father, Olivia. How many times do I have to tell you that before you get it?"

"I don't know."

Elliot kisses the top of my head. "You'd make a good mother. I know you would. I just know it. And any kid you had would be gorgeous. Just like Mom."

I shake my head. "You think?"

"Un-huh." He leans in and kisses me. "Any kid of yours would be gorgeous."

"So you really think I'd be a good mother?"

"Olivia, I've seen you with kids that aren't even yours. I can imagine what you'd be like with one of your own. Trust me. You'd make a good mother."

I do trust him. So I believe him. I look up, as a cell phone rings. I close my eyes and cross my fingers, praying it's not Cragen calling Elliot.

He picks up. "Stabler. Hey, Princess. What's going on? Un-hm. Okay. So when do I get to meet this Jeff? Okay. All right. I'll see you tomorrow." He ends the call.

"What's up?" I question.

"Maureen. She just got home from her date. She's gonna bring the boyfriend around for dinner tomorrow."

I laugh. I can just imagine what the poor guy's gonna go through. "So you really think"-

He cuts me off. "Liv, you'd make a damn good mother, no two ways around it. I can see it, just watching you with my kids."

I smile. I believe him. "I always worried, where I didn't come from the greatest background myself"-

"Hey. I know you'd make a good parent. With some people you can always tell."

And I trust him enough to know that he wouldn't lie to me about something like this. So maybe it's time I changed my mind about having kids.


	14. 14

After the weekend with the Stablers, I find myself at work again. Dinner with Maureen's boyfriend was interesting. Elliot wasn't the overprotective, interrogating father that I'd always thought he'd be when his little girl brought home a guy.

It's the middle of the day and I'm buried in paperwork. Munch and Fin are bickering, over in their corner. Soon, I'm going to bounce a paper ball off the back of Munch's head and earn myself a glare. Cragen steps out from his office and goes to the fax - he's expecting something. On his way back to disappear into his office, again, he stops and looks at the bickering pair across the room from me. "Will you two give it break? Just for one day? For the rest of us and our sanity?"

"Actually, Cap, I find this works better." I crumple up a spare sheet of paper and send it sailing through the air to bounce off the back of John's head. Munch turns around and gives me his classic over-the-glasses look. "Ha."

I roll my eyes and turn back to paperwork. "I'll do it again, Munch, if you start rambling about some Federal conspiracy. What was it earlier? You think that the Kennedy assassination was some sort of set-up?"

"It was." He begins, turning around fully to look at me. "The government"-

"And Elvis is alive. I don't wanna hear it. To me, Kennedy was killed by a nut case with a gun, in Dallas. Not by some crazy government conspiracy."

"That's what they _want _you to believe." Munch removes his glasses.

"Seriously, drop the conspiracy theory crap. If you really think the government is out to kill us, move to another country, already. Maybe it'll keep us all sane. Why don't you just cross the border and leave the rest of us alone?"

"Someday you'll wish you'd listened to me." Munch turns back to his desk, finally.

Cragen sighs. "Can I see you two for a second?"

"What'd you do _this _time, Stabler?" I ask, jokingly, as we step into the boss's office and sit. Elliot glares at me and shakes his head.

"What's going on, Cap?" I resist the urge to cross my fingers. Cragen's been a cop for hell knows who long - at least thirty years. I should have known we couldn't keep a secret from him for long.

"I know." He says, simply. "I know you two are involved. You're dating."

Elliot stares at me, floored, his blue eyes asking me _'what the hell! Did you tell him?'_

"Don't insult me by trying to keep a secret from me again. I don't care about anything else. I don't wanna know. As long as it happens off the job, it's none of my business. As long as you keep things professional around here, I don't care what you do. Just don't try to date each other and keep it a secret right under my nose. It's an insult."

"I"- I stare at him, shocked.

"There's no rules against it. It's just never happened on my watch." He shrugs and leans his elbows on his desk, the expression on his old, basset-hound face turning from boss to father figure. "Like I said. As long as it happens off the clock, I don't care."

I shake my head, slowly, too stunned for words.

"Get outta here and get back to work. What are you waiting for?"

Elliot gets up, first and I follow.

"Olivia." Cragen stops me as I move to step out the door. "If he hurts you, send him to me."

I grin. I'd hug him, but he wouldn't like that. "El, you hear that?" I poke my partner in the ribs.

Elliot turns back to me. "I heard it, Liv. Loud and clear."

"Good. Now get lost, Stabler."

"You gonna tell me to get lost, too?" I raise an eyebrow as Elliot shuts the office door behind him.

"No. C'mere for a minute." Cragen gets up from behind his desk and steps toward me. "He's a good man, Olivia. You'll ground him. Calm him down. Help him work through some of this crap."

"You're not"-

He shakes his head. "I half-expected this from day one. You two clicked. Faster than most new pairs do. You get a new team, especially where you were a rookie, there's this really weird and annoying I-don't-like-you-get-the-hell-outta-my-face period. And he's not the easiest guy to get along with. But you clicked. I knew he was married, so it stopped anything from happening. But when Scarry brought it out, I half-expected this to happen."

"I didn't like him. I wanted him to get the hell outta my face." I reply. "But I don't know why we clicked."

"Because you can calm him down before he throws a punch. And he learned from you, how to handle some of the victims - be sympathetic and be a cop at the same time. He's not gonna hurt you - he's a stand-up guy. As your boss, you know, I don't want it happening here. But off the clock, I'm glad to see you happy."

I grin. "I'd hug you, but you wouldn't like that, would you?"

"Benson, you know you're like a daughter to me. Like any father, I wanna see you happy. I kinda watched you grow up. But here. You've changed, since you came up here. Not every case really hits home. You don't take 'em all personally."

I sigh. "They all hit home."

"But you don't take 'em all personally. You think like a cop. Not a victim. You don't let whatever you're feeling come out, anymore. You're not as emotional."

"Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing." I lean against the wall. "I mean, am I becoming so sensitized to this crap that I don't feel anything anymore?"

"You still feel it. I know you do. But you keep a grip on it. Someone doesn't have to be behind you to drag you off a perp."

"You think so, Dad?" I grin at him, joking, and he gives me a rare smile. "I know. I don't think you've changed. I know you've changed. You're still the same stubborn hardass you were when you first walked in here, though."

"What do you mean?" I glance at him, confused.

"You're stubborn, Benson. No two ways around it. You'll bounce off walls till you get what you want. When you came up here, you were stubborn, you'd seen some action, and you were tough. What I needed in the squad. A woman, who'd be strong enough to stick it out. I've seen a lot of detectives since they put me in this office - a lot of them get burned out or they quit. A lot of people in your position would have quit by now."

"I don't quit."

"I know you don't." Cragen looks out his office window. "I think Munch and Fin are at it again. What's it gonna take to shut them up? A reprimand?"

"No. Then Munch would just start bitching about how you're trampling on his First Amendment right to free speech. I think another paper ball to the back of his head would work fine, though." I grin.

"Go for it. Get back to work."

I turn to leave and he stops me again. "Liv?"

"Yeah?"

"If you marry him - not saying that I'm expecting anything to happen - but if you do, do you have anyone to walk you down the aisle? I know you have some family"-

I grin. "We've got a long way to go, yet, boss. But I don't have anyone, really. I'd be honored, if you would give me away."

"I'd do it in a second. I told you, you're like a daughter to me. So don't do anything crazy. Like elope and take off to Vegas with him. I need you two around here."

I laugh, quietly. "Vegas? Nah. Manhattan's just fine with me, Cap."


	15. 15

1I settle in my chair and look at my partner. We just came back from interviewing a victim at the hospital. "Flip you for the DD-5?" I question.

Elliot sighs and pulls a quarter from his pocket. "Heads or tails?" He asks.

"Heads." I reply, watching him send it flying into the air. It lands on his desk and I peer over the wall of personal effects between our desks. Heads. "Here ya go." I hand him the file, grinning.

He mutters something unrepeatable and glares at me. "How do you win every time?"

"Don't ask me." I shrug. The squad's actually sort of quiet this morning. I think it has something do to with the fact that Munch and Fin are in court and not here. The boss is in a meeting downtown and everybody else is working. "You know, my mother used to say that if you keep making faces like that, your face will eventually get stuck that way." I comment and Elliot glares at me again.

I stifle a laugh, at the look on his face, hearing conversation behind me. Normally I'd ignore it, but I think I recognize one of the voices. I turn my chair around, as a uniform guides my kid cousin Brian into the squad.

I shake my head. He's the splitting image of his late father. He and Charlie would pass for brothers. They have the same build - short, rather than tall, but solid and muscular. They have the same hair - a dark shade of auburn rather than the red that my grandmother had. Father and son also share the same pale grey eyes that were inherited from my grandfather.

They even have the same smile. A charmer's smile. It's not a dangerous bad-boy grin. It's more innocent and boyish. The last time I saw my cousin, he was dressed in a tux, for his wedding last July. Now he's dressed in jeans and a dark t-shirt. "What are you doing here?" I demand, pushing my hair out of my eyes. "The last time I checked, Boston was a four-hour drive. You wouldn't make that long of a drive just to bug me, would you?"

He shakes his head. "We flew in, yesterday. Sydney's older sister just spilt from her husband, so Syd's down there, helping her get settled in a new place. They told me to get lost, so I got lost."

Sydney. His newlywed wife. She's stubborn, she has a temper, and a mind of her own. I like her. She'll make him walk the line and if he's pissing her off, he knows it. She'll be good for him. "So you got lost and somehow wound up here?" I raise an eyebrow.

Brian rolls his eyes, impatiently. "I tried to call you, last night, but all I got was your damned machine."

"Yeah. I worked late and I didn't wanna go home, so I crashed here. So what do you want?"

He gets himself a chair. My partner looks at me and raises an eyebrow. He wants an introduction. "Kid, this is my partner, Detective Elliot Stabler. El, this is my cousin Brian."

After they trade handshakes, Brian turns back to me. "You know, I've been working for a year now."

"Yeah."

"Do you think you can explain to me why I'm still on a desk?"

I grin at him. "I didn't warn you, kid. Rookies get the crappy jobs. Like paper-shuffling. Rookies get the jobs that everyone else hates."

"Duh." He responds. "But a year? I should be out in the field by now."

"Not really." I shake my head. "I know you did well in school and in your training, so don't start with that. You're good. But you're young. Your bosses could just be giving you crappy jobs, to see how you handle it. To see if you're cut out for fieldwork. Your bosses are probably just watching you, to see if you're ready."

"I've been ready for a year now!" He protests.

"Have you?" I raise an eyebrow, again. "Because there's training and then there's the real thing."

"What's the difference?"

I sigh and rub my eyes. "There is a difference. When you're training, it's a controlled setting. You know what's gonna happen. And if you screw up, you get a second chance. Out in the street, you don't _know _what's going to happen. You don't know what your perp might have on him or what he might do. Believe me, kid - a perp that's on the run isn't going to give you a second chance. You got one shot to get it right or it's all gone to hell. You think you're ready for it, but you're not. Nobody's really ready for it." Overeager rookies - usually the first ones to get themselves killed.

"I'm ready." Brian decides to argue with me.

I shake my head. "Are you? You _think _you know what you'd do, in a situation, but it's different, when you're actually out there. Everybody thinks they're ready for it, but nobody is."

"Were you?"

"Oh, hell, no." I respond, honestly. "Two years in, I had my first justified shooting. I lost it. They'd taught me how to shoot, but I'd never thought I'd actually have to kill."

"So you think the bosses are just testing me?" My cousin looks at me, curious.

"Yeah. Paper-shuffling and crappy jobs - it's a rite of passage for newbies."

"'Cause I don't think they like me, in the office."

I shake my head, grinning at him. "Do they pick on you?"

Brian rolls his eyes. "Constantly."

"They like you. If they didn't like you and wanted to kick your ass, they wouldn't pick on you. Don't ask me why, 'cause I understand it just about as much as you do. I think they're just messing with you."

"You think?"

"Um-hm. The guys like to play stupid little mind games with the rookies, sometimes, at least around here. They think it's funny. I never told you what they did to me, did I?"

"No." My young cousin leans back in the chair.

I tuck a stray bit of my hair back behind one ear. "When I first started out, some idiot started a betting pool on how long I'd last. How long it would be before I quit. The highest bet was two weeks. And I didn't find out about that for a year."

"But it's not fair. I should be"-

I roll my eyes. My cousin might have inherited his father's looks, but he didn't get the old man's personality. Charlie never complained about anything. He just took what he got and kept his mouth shut. All his son does is whine.

I shake my head and sigh. "You know, I've met little kids who whine less than you do. Kids who've been through more crap than most adults could handle and they don't whine about it. You picked your job. Law enforcement's a competitive field. You gotta show 'em you can keep up. If you wanna be in the field, instead of on a desk, grow up and suck it up. I hate paperwork, too. I don't like getting dragged out of bed at two in the morning, either, but see that office over there?" I point in the direction of Cragen's office.

Brian nods.

"That's my boss's office. If I start bitching, I'm off the squad. If you whine and complain about it, they're gonna think you're this immature little punk and leave you on a desk. You gotta suck it up and deal with it. If you bitch about paperwork, what are you gonna do with on a stakeout? If you wanna be in the field, stop whining like a five-year-old and grow up."

"I don't"-

"You're doing it now. Whining about being stuck on a desk and shuffling paper. I don't like it, either. But I'm not gonna whine about it. You ever see that movie with Tom Hanks in it? The one where he's coaching the girls' team?"

He only blinks at me.

"'There's no cryin' in baseball.' You gotta suck it up, kid. You gotta show your bosses that they can trust you in the field. That you're not gonna screw things up. And that you're not gonna drive everybody else nuts on a stakeout, bitching about how boring it is."

He sighs and pulls his cell phone from his pocket, as it rings. "Hey, babe. What's going on? Right. Damn. I'll be there in a half-hour." He ends the call and looks at me. "Sydney's gonna kill me - we're supposed to be having lunch with Sandy and I'm late."

"Tell her I said hey." I wave him out the door.

When he's gone, Elliot looks at me. "Liv?"

"Hm?" I pop the end of my pen in my mouth.

"You stole my line." He remarks and I laugh, at the look at his face.

"It wasn't your line, unless you're Tom Hanks." I comment.

"You don't remember me telling you that?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah. I do remember you telling me that. But just because you quoted it doesn't make it your line." I persist.

He rolls his eyes. "You should've been a lawyer. You've got the qualities for it."

"Oh, yeah?" I raise an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"You're stubborn."

"That's inherited. I was born that way." I grin at him.

"You always seem to win an argument."

"Not my fault." I shake my head. "I just know how to win 'em and I go for it."

"And you're a pain in the ass."

I mock-glare at him, knowing he's joking. "Am I? 'Cause if I'm such a pain in the ass, all you gotta do is request another partner and Cragen will pair me with someone else. But then I'd make sure you got stuck breaking in some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. I know you wouldn't have the patience to do that."

He returns my mock-glare and we both laugh.

(A/n: Did anyone catch the obvious season one episode reference? I just got my hands on the season one DVDs, so bear with me. Let me know in a review, if you notice it.)


	16. 16

Elliot slips his arm snugly around my waist, as we walk out of the precinct house and onto the sidewalk. I grin at him. "Do you know how long I've waited for you to do that? Get your hand off my back and put your arm around me?"

He kisses my cheek and ignores the question. "Do you think they know about us?"

"Cragen's not telling. But a rumor's gonna start, soon." Sometimes police precincts remind me of high schools. Gossip and rumors go around just as fast as they do in a high school. "And you wait till Munch picks up that - he's never gonna let us live it down. I have a neighbor like that - maybe I should swing Munch an introduction. Think he could make her the fifth ex-wife?"

Elliot laughs at that. "I thought it was three."

"Four."

"Whatever. Why the hell are we talking about Munch's ex-wives?"

"I don't know. So what do you wanna do? Go get something to eat? Get a drink?"

"I'm starving." He admits, hugging me a little closer to his side.

We step into the little corner diner we've been eating at for the last couple of weeks. We both order burgers and fries. I've been eating like a rabbit for too long. I can give myself one treat. "You know." I comment, leaning back in the booth, as we wait. "I used to work in a place just like this, when I was a kid."

He takes my hand, which is palm-down on the table between us, in his. He shakes his head, looking at my nails. "Kathleen?" He asks, rolling his eyes.

I grin. Saturday morning, he brought Kathleen out to the house. And I just happened to be there. I'm spending a lot of weekends and days off with him. At first I protested, because I felt like I was cutting in on his time with the kids, but they don't seem to mind me being around. She and I got to talking and she convinced me to let her do my nails. She painted them black and I can't believe he's just noticing it, now.

It's a little strange, but I'm getting used to it. "Yeah. You should see my toes." I laugh, softly.

"Do I _want _to?"

"No. Probably not. They're purple."

"I have gotta keep you away from my kids. First it was Lizzie and the pink toenails, now you've got black fingernails. They're trying to turn you into a teenager again." He muses and I laugh.

"They're great kids, El. And you know, Kathleen's a smart girl. I don't think you have to worry about her. You've taught her how to think."

"Only a woman who's never had kids can say that." He protests. "You worry about then whether you need to or not. Especially in this screwed-up world. But you know, I'm worried they've got the real you held hostage somewhere. Saturday night, you and Maureen were having a conversation about Brad Pitt's butt. That's not you."

I grin. His 'baby girl' came out to see Dad and while he was in the kitchen, we started to talk about some random girl stuff. I work in a male-dominated field and I don't get to see the few friends that I have who aren't male very often. So I was glad to have some girl chat, even though Maureen's a little less than half my age. He heard us laughing and came in to check it out.

"Brad Pitt's ass? If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought you were drunk."

"Hey." I poke him with my toe. "I'm entitled to a little fun. Who says I have to be serious all the time?" I know he's used to seeing me like that. Serious, no-nonsense and ready to shove my foot up his ass, if he doesn't listen to me. But I don't want to be like that, all the time. I want to be able to relax and have fun with him and those kids.

"So are you coming to hang out with us on Friday?" He's got the twins again, this weekend.

I shake my head, as the waitress sets down our food. "Saturday morning, I'm going shopping."

"Shopping?" He raises an eyebrow. "I know you women don't do that alone - who's your partner in crime?"

"Maureen."

"You're taking my daughter on a shopping trip?"

"It was _her _idea." I protest.

"Right."

"It was. She saw that picture that Don took of us at the Christmas party - the one you've got in the living room. She liked my dress. Then she suggested a shopping trip."

"You two are gonna rob me blind." He groans.

"Casey might join us."

"_Why _does this keep looking _worse _by the minute?"

"Shut up. I've got my own bank account, El." I kick him. "The only that's gonna be robbing you blind is your baby girl."

He grins. "Liv, I like this side of you. You're relaxed."

"I'm happy." I reply. And for once in my life, I am really happy. His kids have accepted me, instantly. I know I'll never take Kathy's place - she's their mother and she gave birth to them - but if I can help or do anything for them, I'll do it.

Saturday morning rolls around and I'm just finishing a quick breakfast, when my buzzer rings. I swallow the last bite of cereal, dump the bowl in the sink and go to it. It's Maureen, as expected. "I just gotta run and brush my teeth - you can make yourself at home." I tell her, disappearing into the bathroom.

When I step back out, she's looking at the photos in my living room. "That's you and Dad, huh?"

"Yeah." I look at the framed photo she's talking about. Elliot and I, at the first precinct Christmas party we went to as partners. "God, am I ever glad I cut my hair." I comment, shaking my head.

"It looks good. It does." She persists, looking at me. "This is"-

"My Police Academy photo. I'm your age in that one." I turn as the buzzer rings again. It's Casey, this time.

"Hey, Liv." She adjusts her ponytail, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. It's a change, because I'm used to seeing her in a suit. I don't know when she suddenly decided to use my nickname, but now she's a little more friendly.

I turn to my partner's daughter and make the introductions. Casey shakes her head. "I should have known. You look a lot like your father." She tells Maureen.

I think we hit every shop that we can afford in Manhattan. We even go into some of the higher-priced ones, just for the sake of daydreaming. We try a few things on that we'd never be able to afford, just for fun. Six hours later, Casey's going home to work and Maureen and I are headed out to Queens.

"So what's my credit card bill gonna look like?" Elliot asks Maureen, as we sit in the kitchen and the twins watch cartoons in the living room.

"_Dad_!" She lightly punches him. "I didn't buy much. But you should get Olivia to show you the dress she bought."

All eyes are on me, suddenly. "Okay. I'll go try it on for you." I pick up the bag that it's in and go into the bathroom. I shed my jeans and my sweater and pull the dress out of the bag. The few dresses I own are dark colors. So I bought this, after Casey poked me for about five minutes.

It's simple. Nothing fancy about it. A straight skirt that falls just above my knee and thin straps over my shoulders. But I love the color. It's a bright shade of red. Not something I'd usually wear, never mind try on, but I had two people with me who insisted.

I step out into the kitchen and I see Elliot's eyes widen, for a minute. "Liv . . . " He trails off, looking at me. I spin for him and he gets up to kiss me. "You're gorgeous." He whispers, in my ear.

I grin and kiss him on the cheek.

When I've changed, I discover that the kitchen's empty. I cut through the living room and past the twins. I take a peek at what they're watching. A cartoon that has something to do with a bright yellow talking sponge. A talking sponge?

I join Elliot on the couch on the other side of the room. He's buried in the paper. I give him a poke. "So what's the big deal with the talking sponge?"

"Sponge Bob?" He grins at me. "Believe me, you get sick of him after a while."

I shake my head. "A talking sponge? What kind of people are creating kids' shows today? We had normal shows."

"I know."

"Where'd Maureen disappear to?" I question, settling against his side.

"She left her phone in the car."

His oldest reappears and takes the chair in the living room. Lizzie promptly abandons her brother and joins her older sister in the oversized chair. This is what I've wanted since I was a kid. A family. So they're not my kids, but I can join in.

Later, when Maureen's gone back into the city to study for a midterm and the twins are in bed, Elliot and I settle in on the couch. "Liv?" He questions, as I lean my head against his shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"What made you buy that dress?"

"Casey." I respond. "It's not something I'd usually wear, but Maureen spotted it and they made me try it on and Casey poked me till I bought it."

"It looks great."

"I know."

"You need to wear some color. So I'll get Casey to poke you to death, if I have to."

I laugh, quietly and lean over to kiss him. "You don't like the way I dress?"

"I love the way you dress. I just hate that it's mostly dark colors. Are you afraid of wearing color or something?"

"No."

"Will you wear something besides black or blue? Huh?"

"Deal." I grin at him and stretch out my bare feet. "See? I told you they were purple."

He rolls his eyes at me and I laugh. "You're changing." He murmurs.

"I know. I'm happy. I really am."

"Good."

(A/n: I'm glad everybody liked this. And this is the end.)


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